The Questlove Show - Malcolm Gladwell

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

In this special, live-recorded conversation, Questlove sits down with bestselling author and podcast host Malcolm Gladwell at the iHeart Cafe in Cannes, France. The two old friends embark on a wide-ranging, insightful, and humorous discussion that covers everything from Malcolm’s childhood musical experiences, his theory of creativity and genius, and failing as a pathway to success. Through stories of growing up in a multicultural household, creative serendipity, and collaborative critique, Malcolm and Questlove explore how formative experiences shape both art and perspective. They also reflect on the legacy of critical thinking, the modern media landscape, and the impact of AI on truth and storytelling.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media.

Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clivert Show on the I-Hard Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode.

Listen to the Sports Slice Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slica Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

Greg Gillespie and Michael Ranchini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all day to do.

the same prolific con artist. They take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wood. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.

If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks dad on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Questlove show is a production of IHeart Radio. Good people, what's up? How you doing? Today's episode is actually the very first episode taped as the Questlove show. It was with author, podcast host, and my pal, Malcolm Gladwell. We did this live on stage at the IHeart Cafe in Cannes, back in June. And you'll hear me explore with this format. asking some random questions to get to know people in new ones.

Malcolm seemed to have fun with it, and along the way we discussed his latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. So please enjoy this episode, and let's go back live to the IHart Cafe. All right. Right. Who's excited to hear a great podcast tonight? About five years ago, we here at IHart had the chance to begin working with one of the great podcasts out there.

By the way, I'm Will Pearson, president of IHart podcast. we are so happy to have. Was that what that was about? It just was great, guys. I'm just going to sit down and chat for a bit. Thank you. No, but I'm pleased to introduce one of our favorite podcasters,

a true cultural powerhouse. Of course, he's a founding member of the legendary roots. Let's give it up for the roots. He's a best-selling author. He's going to do the wander up here. He's never patient. He's not a patient man.

He's a historian. He's a creative visionary. And as of three-year, years ago, an Academy Award winner. Let's give it up for the Academy Award winner for Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. If you haven't checked out this year's documentary that he did about the brilliant Sly Stone, unfortunately, we lost him just last week. It is a brilliant documentary as well. He's, of course, an incredible DJ. I don't know if anybody got to hear him last night up at Hotel DuCap. An incredible setup there. But we here love to

celebrate his genre hopping podcast where he gets the chance to chat with people such as Michelle Obama, Chris Rock, Shaka Khan. The list goes on and on and on. He's the ultimate multi-hyphenate and he is interviewing someone also incredibly interesting. Please join me in welcoming the one and only Quest Love. How's everyone out there? All right, I was handed this LaBoooooooo like five minutes ago, so I know most of you don't know what this is, neither do live, but I just learned what a little boo-boo was. Well, first of all, welcome to Ken Lyon. Thank you for coming. Shout out to my I-Heart family for organizing and putting this together.

Shout out to the 215 family as well. So basically, this platform is primarily known as where I dissect music or musicians. Occasionally, an actor or director and author comes on the show. occasional politician, but we're going to do something different today. Pretty much I'll say that our guests thinks different and probably, specifically to me, but for a lot of us, he taught me how to think different. I didn't think about the power of critical thinking, probably until the beginning of the aughts in the early 2000s and whatnot.

And I know he hates all this attention, but no, he's really changed my life. life as far as me understanding my personality for wanting to practice or knowing the science of what's behind things and whatnot. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Malcolm Gladwell to Questlellan How you doing, man? I'm good. Okay. Delighted to be here. Well, let me start off asking because, you know, when I first met you 20 years ago, like both of us were arriving at a new place where, you know, we kind of reached our prominence at the same time. Now that it's... It's 20, 25 years later. I'll just ask you just off the cuff,

like, does it ever get exhausting when people are always running to you for answers or how to explain things? Well, it'd be worse if they didn't do that, right? So you always have to think about the flip side of it. If you produce stuff and no one, it never caused a ripple, that would be worse. Okay.

So this is a problem I'm happy to have. Okay. I can accept that. Normally I start with a music-related question, but I know that's not your forte, but I'm going to ask you anyway. It's unfair to say it's not my forte. I don't know. Next to you, I don't know what I'm going to be. Okay. Well, I mean, you told me before that... Well, I was worried you were going to start, you know... That's why I'm asking this question, Chris. What was your first musical memory and life?

Oh, I know exactly what it was. We had just moved... It was 1960. We just moved to Canada from England. We did not have a television, but my parents decided to buy a record player, but we had no records. And so I went with my mother to the public library, and we checked out two records. Peter Paul and Mary Greatest Hits,

which I listened to once and was like, eh. And Bridge Over Trouble Water, which... Simon and Garfunkel. I know the Aretha Franklin version, so... Which, which... you know, if you think about sort of serendipitous moments in your life, if that was really the, the first album I ever listened to really, the first, we didn't listen to the radio, except for, like, news radio.

And we didn't have a TV. I had no exposure, zero, to popular music. And the first popular music I was ever exposed to in a concentrated way was one of the greatest albums of all time. Which is? Bridge over trouble. Okay. That's like if the first novel you read was one, War and Peace, or the first scientist you met was like Einstein, or you know what I mean, it's like incredibly lucky. And that, I was, to this day, I remember exactly what it was like to listen to all those songs. Well, I was going to ask you, what was it about that record that spoke

to you at the time? It was, it's funny, because I later, 40 years later, did an audiobook with Paul Simon, where I interviewed him for like 40 hours, and which was this great, sort of full circle, but I think it was, I hadn't realized how much joy there could be in pop music. Remember, I had no exposure to it. If you have no exposure, you have no emotional context for it. So I didn't know what pop music was supposed to be. Was it supposed to be, all I knew was church music. I knew music that was supposed to be kind of ceremonial and formal and kind of weighted with moral meaning. I didn't know joy in music. I knew nursery rhymes, but the music that was supposed to be kind of ceremonial and formal and kind of weighted with moral meaning. I didn't know joy in music. I knew Rhy rhymes, but they were silly. They weren't joyful. That album is, you know, Cecilia and that

drum solo and on and on and on and on. And then the kind of, in the middle of it, they dropped the bomb of Bridge Over Trouble Water, which is like a full-on gospel song sung by two Jewish guys from Queens. And like, even then it's genius. You discover the genius of a, I mean, backtrack. I grew up in a household that was a cultural contradiction, a black mother and a white mother and a white father. And I was aware of the fact that was a discordant idea in the culture. I didn't know anyone else who had that combination. And then I come across this record,

which has a similar discordant thing. I knew what gospel music was, and this was, it's a gospel song. Right. sung by two Jewish guys from Queens. Like, that's in, if you're seven, six, that's really interesting. And you're kind of a student of this. So even at the age of six,

you had the wear with all the bandwidth to sort of differentiate emotion. Well, remember, I was well-churched. So I'd been growing up in the evangelical churches of Jamaica, the formal churches of England. So I knew if you're well-churched, you quickly become acquainted with a whole range of kind of cultural forms.

Was, air quote, secular music not allowed in the household, or did they frown upon it? It's not that we was frowned upon it was we never got around to it. You just never knew existed. My mother, the first movie she ever watched in its entirety was the movie. Remember the Melanie Griffith movie Working Girl? Yeah. My mom watched that with the sound off. Wait, time out.

That was like late 80s. My mother was born in 1932. The first movie she saw its full was on a plane, and she didn't realize she could buy the sound. So she just watched it. Right.

And her comment was, so we didn't have a TV. So she was really encountering a movie that form for the first time. She was completely blown away by it. And I remember as a kid, thinking that is deeply hilarious.

That she thought this is magic. Without the sound, mind you. Right. This is magical. Malcolm, that was an extraordinary film. It's the comment that she made. But like, we never rule against it. We just didn't do TV and we didn't go to the movies and we didn't buy records.

Okay, so I have a theory that boredom is necessary. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, I said I heard of a theory about, you're the one that showed me that theory. Here I'm saying, I'm selling you your own theory. No, it's my mom's theory. Because I would say to my mom repeatedly, I'm living in what I consider to be a cultural desert in the middle of rural Canada. And I would say to my mom every day, I'm bored and she would say, Malcolm, that's a good thing. Your mind needs a rest.

I agree. Did you agree with her at the time? I do now. I was aware of how I was forced to manufacture my own fun. And I grew to really, really love, there was a kind of, in a wonderful way, a pressure to make my own fun. And I would, the hijinks I did as a kid were so elaborate and so complex and so ironic in kind of many layers that it was the result of that. So no cousins or siblings on the other side of the town you never knew about? We're living in the middle of rural Ontario.

Okay. Our neighbors are old order Mennonites who drive horses and buggies and don't have electricity. And like I said, we have no TV and we don't go to the movies. We don't really ever go to restaurants. We go to Jamaica once a year at Christmas. And we read a lot of books. That's what's going on. So give me an example of how you would.

entertain yourself in your childhood. Well, my best friend was a guy named Terry Martin, who I was, again, just as I was lucky to have encountered Bridge Over Trouble Water as the first real record, my first really close friend was this guy, Terry Martin, who was another, neither of his parents went to college. He grew up, his dad was a chicken farmer.

He grew up down the road. He's now, by the way, a tenure professor at Harvard. But that's the luck. He happened to be the guy I ran into in elementary school, And he's genius. Okay. And he had a sense, he thought that all rules should be broken.

And we convinced our moms that this was true, because our moms knew each other. And so our moms basically let us do whatever we want, including not go to school. Wait, you would tell them that you're cutting school? Oh, my mom was complicit. We had a thing, Terry and I decided that it was too easy.

We were very competitive. It was too easy to compete on. who could get the best grades, because, like, how hard was that? Because no one, my school, like, 10 people went to college every year from my school. Right. So we decided what we would do is we would create, and I forgot what we called it,

but the number we cared about was your average times the number of absences you had that year. And the winner was the one with the highest number. So we competed not only to get good grades, but to see how many days of school we could skip. It was fantastic. That's an example of the kind of shit

that we were doing. So you're going to see what it was. You are a rebel. Okay. No, but it's not. The genius was it's rebellion, but it's highly constrained institutionalized rebellion. Because the point was to excel at school while never going there. Right?

That, it was the contrary. That interest, that's what interested in. I'm so smart that I was. We're not going to, we're not blowing off school. On the contrary. Right. We're like, we intend to ace out while never showing up. And then I, Terry, Terry,

won that, but then I decided what I would do is skip a year of high school basically without telling anyone. So I just enrolled in one year ahead, classes in my senior year. And no one appeared to notice, which tells you something about

Canada in the 70s. Wait, Charlemagne's face right now. Like, I'm... How's this scientifically possible to happen? Well, no, so the key, I thought about this a lot when I was a kid. I realized that the only subject matter where this was going to be hard was math, because math was sequential.

Right. So if you were going to skip junior year math is what I was intending to do, then you might have a problem. But then, what's my ace in the hole? My dad's a mathematician. So I just had him like, whenever I had a problem, I was like, okay, what am I missing here? And he'd say, oh, yeah, it's just this, this, this. I don't know why I'm going on about my high school years, but they were such fun.

I also realized you didn't have to graduate from high school. Once that, in Canada at the time, there were loopholes, which I was too boring to go into, but I had this insight at 15 that I didn't have to get a diploma to go to college. And once I realized that, I was like, well, all bets are off. That means why I don't have to show up for school. I don't have to take my junior year. It all cascaded.

But did you generally just not like school? Like, what about the whole social angle? of it all. That came later. Never mind. Okay, you didn't like it. So what would you consider your first foray into this cold world we have outside?

Like if you're inside of an isolated bubble where, you know, you're allowed to cut school and without repercussions or... Yeah. You know. I think I'm still inside the bubble. I don't think I've ever... I'm not... You have to, to backtrack,

I was raised to believe, and it was a correct belief, and my greatest frustration with people in my position is they don't recognize it, which was, I was a middle-class male growing up in a developed country in the 70s who had came from a healthy, happy home life. The world was constructed for me. The whole architecture of Western society was constructed so the people who were like me would succeed. Like, you had to really work hard not to. That was my... I think that's

the correct position. It's why I have such frustration with, like, people in my position who whine about their lives. It's like, I'm sorry, like, the whole world was built for you. You have no business whining about anything ever. There were no obstacles.

Like, institutionally, every obstacle all around me were people who faced obstacles, but not me. By three, I had a fighter flight situation. You know, like, growing up in my neighborhood where you instantly had radar of which route was safe to go to school,

go home, like growing up in crack era, West Philadelphia. Yeah. So you'd never had a fighter flight existence. My mom was like friends with the principal. And if I got in trouble, she would lecture him. I felt like, wait. Wait, what?

But yeah, she would call him up. His name was Roger Milliken. She knew Roger. She'd call him up and say, what are you doing? Like, you have bigger problems than worrying about Malcolm, which I think was a correct position. Wow. She's now in a nursing home,

but she's still, like, doing battle with the nursing home administration. Still? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, the West Indian lady is an indefatigable and implacable force. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying.

Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment,

and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest, The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters

when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits, teams look for, to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slica Life 12, and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed

revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in someone, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used.

for some light's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alespian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until George. Justice has served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network.

It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and dad, I think I want to really close. give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. He goes, but there's so much

luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a, you know, calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For you, what were your aspirations of, did you know from the gate that you wanted to be like in the social structure? I didn't think about, it never occurred to me to think about the future in that way. And I still don't in a, I'm not someone who, I'm not a planner

and I'm not a, I don't really think beyond next week. I assume, or even tomorrow, I assume, I'm optimistic enough that I assume things will work out. So you've always lived in the present. Yeah, I don't, I'm not someone who, once the day is over, it is erased from my, living in this administration. Yeah. Forced me to start. living in the present. Like right now, ever since November 7th, my only goal in life is to have the best

June 17th of 2025 that I can have. So wait, I'm not doing it. No, no, no, no, I'm not doing it for a plus. Thank you. But previously, my thing was literally strategic planning. Like, professionally as Questlove, my

life is planned in three-year increments. Where I at least know that I still have worked booked until 28. But, like, living day to day, like, the undoing of waking up every

morning, thinking, like, financially, like, my bills, my staff, growth, my survival, and so for you, is this always, like, 24 hours a day? I probably have, on an unconscious level, all the same anxieties you do,

but I have, as a psychologist say, I'm probably better defended. Living in the present is my way of warding off those anxieties. If I open that door and start thinking about next year, I worry that an avalanche

of things will bury me. So when you release a book, you're not instantly thinking, what's my next project in two years or? No. I have, I know what I'm working on now, but what I know is that the process of

inspiration is so serendipitous and unpredictable that it's just foolish to try and plan it out. It will always, like I was doing this thing, I'm doing this big podcast right now, which is this long series about a true crime thing about a murder in Alabama. And I thought I was going to do it one way. And then I make a reporting trip to Mussel Shoals. It's where this takes place. In the Quad Cities, Mussel Shoals. is...

Alabama. Yeah, Florence. Yeah. Descumbria. I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Florence, Alabama. And a guy comes out to me and says, hey, you're Malcolm Lelagia.

What are you doing here? Oh, I'm doing this thing about this murder took place 40 years ago. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah. You know, you should talk to my friend Grant. I was like, okay. So I call up Grant. He's like, oh, yeah, I know all about that.

And Grant fixes me up with like 15 people who knew everything about this murder. And then I go back and it's... second time and I meet some of those people and then one of the guys says, oh, my friend Ricky, who I have breakfast with every morning, he actually investigated the murder. I thought everyone who investigated it was dead. So I just like get in my car and drive one mile and there's Ricky and Ricky tells me everything. Like, if that's your, that's, to my mind, is the way not just the world works, but it's the way the creative process works, is you just put yourself in harm's

way of something and things will hit you. And I kind of, on some level, have a confidence. The reason I went there is on some unconscious level, I knew that I would have an encounter like that one in the coffee shop. Maybe it was, I didn't envision that particular thing. But I knew if I went there, something would come out of it. So I went there without a plan. What's your creative ecosystem like?

Are you just a circle of one? Or do you at least have someone to bounce ideas off of someone that says, that's not a good look or... I have... Informally, I think I have a fair amount of that. I'm operating within Pushkin, my audio company, where I have a built-in ecosystem of editors

and we have table reads where I read stuff aloud and get feedback. And I've realized how valuable that is. What I've always believed is that if you have an idea, what you should do is talk about it obsessively. So the minute you have what you think is a special idea, the first thing you should do is share it with as many people as humanly possible,

which is counterintuitive, right? Because your instinct is to hold on to something that you think is special. But you have to fight that instinct because only not, it's not just that there is value people tell you when they hear the idea, but there is value in you iterating on the idea in conversation. Because you will, you won't explain it the same way twice. The ten the time you've explaining it as someone you realize you're explaining it in a totally different way because it's the same way a stand-up comic does four months of practice in

comedy bars before they do their Netflix special, right? Because it's incredibly valuable to say something to somebody and to listen to their pauses and a musician is the same way, right? And so I think you had to you have to, if you're a writer,

you have to build that into your sort of practice. practice. And so I have a really good friend who's a very successful screenwriter and my best friend. And I tell him everything. I just watch his eyes. And he will let you know if he just didn't work for him or if it's, why are you doing it that? Like he's really honest, you know. And I was going to say are people allowed to be honest with you. Even now that you're Malcolm Gladwell, your past, you're an adjective. People now to say Gladwellian or like in describing.

usually in disparagement, but yes, they do use that Gladwellian theory? No, because the older and more successful I've gotten, the more willing I am to accept criticism. Because, like, I don't have any... The stakes are lower, right? When's the first time you got pushback

for one of your theories? Oh, well, I mean, so often I can't even keep track. When's the first time you took it personal? I'm only asking, in this simply because the irony is, of course, you know, I read your book in 2000, right when the height of my recording career was just starting. And, you know, the one album in my canon, that's kind of like the red-headed stepchild, is the tipping point, which that's the first time, you know, as someone that was a straight-A student with critics and always on the top ten list of the end of the year and all that

stuff. That's the first time we got pushback. And so when people are like... But we're still friends. We're still friends. No, I'm playing. No, we are. But for you though, what now I have

a good relationship with what they call failure. One, I don't take the undesirable result as personal as I used to. And, you know, it's depressing. Like I'd have Many times I've had panic attacks

And you know artists are always in their head And all that stuff But for you though You just you knew out the gate that No it's that I don't My feeling is it's You know I'm a distance runner And that has really powerfully shaped

My perspective on life And I really I mean it sounds corny but I'm running a very long race So somebody not disliking a critic attacking something that I've done is like someone pulls ahead of you in lap two. And my position is, well, but the race is 50 laps. So like, who cares? I mean, not who cares. It hurts. It will sting. But it's not a terminal. It's not devastating. I once read years ago this thing that has always stayed with me, which I think is incredibly

interesting. It was a guy named Dean Simonton who studied creativity. He was trying to figure out what distinguishes highly created people from people who are not as creative? And his initial thought was a creative person, a successful creative person, a genius, is someone who is a higher hit rate. So for every 10 ideas they have, eight would be good,

whereas someone who was mediocre, they'd have 10 ideas, and they'd have two of them would be good. That's what he thought. He does this long, complicated analysis of like 200 geniuses, and he realizes he's totally wrong. The hit rate, is exactly the same,

except that the genius has ten times as many ideas. So, like, by definition, the genius has more failures than the mediocre person, because their output is just greater. I thought that was, it's so interesting. Einstein has a jillion bad ideas,

but he has so many ideas, it doesn't matter. Well, let me ask you then, because, uh, kind of in my field of work. You know, oftentimes, especially in music, the word genius is

completely overused. And, you know, I'm also in a field of entertainment in which those that put numbers on the board are often rewarded with accolades and that sort of thing. And oftentimes, people that I really think that are making artistic strides and whatever they do, don't get hits, whatever. So in music, especially,

I tend to think that the geniuses are often overlooked and under-celebrated, as opposed to, oh, I had a good idea, and it works. I mean, do you agree with that? Yeah, I'm not, what I'm talking about success in this context, I'm not necessarily talking about commercial success. Like, to go back to my Paul Simon, one of my favorite artists, I thought his last album, which was done when he was whatever, 80, seven seals, it might be my favorite Paul Simon.

I'm in his repertoire of what is that number, I don't know, 18, I don't know how many albums he's done. Right. But to my mind, what qualifies him as being at the very top of the pinnacle is sustained excellence over a very long period and an unwillingness to accept the notion that he didn't stop. He didn't sort of accept the fact that his commercial decline was somehow indicative of. his own creative failure, he persisted. And I think Seven Seals, seven seals, like, it took me like five listens. By the fifth listen, I was like, this is unbelievable.

This is such a mature, complicated, brilliant, more than a summation of his previous work, but a departure in this really beautiful way. And that's what I'm talking about. That he had, he'd be the first time, he's had some crappy albums along the way. But that's my point, that the truly creative person is defined by their productivity and not by their success rate. I call that the thriller effect.

So the thriller effect to me was, you know, when Michael Jackson's previous album, off the wall came out, it was critically acclaimed. And it was a success. It sold 8 million copies. He thought it was a failure because he only got two Grammy nominations and basically, had his Joker, what way they get a load of me? Like, that was his, Thriller was going to be his revenge. Now, the thing is, as an artistic statement, Thriller is a success, but what happens is

people, the conversation of Thriller was the first time, especially music, in which the quantity was at focus and not the quality of it. So, in other words, it won eight Grammys. It sold 64, blah, blah, blah, a million. It made him hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of millions

of dollars. So and then suddenly that became our North Star. And I understand the need for survival and security, especially for black artists, is important. But suddenly that to me is sort of when the conversation changed with

art, where now it's like how many units did you sell? How many... Do you think that's problematic? Can we ever get to a place where people genuinely judge art or just get taste. I think taste is kind of the... I don't know if we still have good taste

and are chasing success. The kind of thought experiment is, would your cultural consumption be different if you were unaware of any of those indices of creative work success? So if you never knew where a song charted when you listen to the song. If you never knew

whether a book was a bestseller or not when you read the book, or on and on and on, I kind of think our choices and our preferences would be quite different, and I'm guessing in a really lovely way. That is correct. So

often my friends laugh at my rock choices, because my rock knowledge is coming from that standpoint, that I will get something without me knowing the history or the background of it. In other words,

the first Dylan record I liked was self-portrait, which was like the Christian phase of Dylan, which critics were like, ah, get out, you know, they didn't like it. And I dug it because I didn't have the knowledge of it. Or even with the Stones

releasing an emotional rescue or when Rattle and Hum came out from you, like if it's Christian, critically bad, then that's the album I like. Well, you were seeing it. It's like my mom with Working Girl. You were seeing it with fresh eyes, right? Exactly. And only then, like, years later, I was like,

oh, that album was critically planned, or people think that that's his worst album. Yeah. Dylan fans hated that record. But, one, I liked it because, as a hip-hop artist, there's just, like, at least four gems on there that... I hear music different than, you know, the average person. But I believe that's true

If you don't have the knowledge of Yeah A lot of this also has to do with the kind of failure of the critical function cultural function in society So in its original sense The role of critics was To help us understand the intention

Of the artist Right It wasn't to kind of Pass judgment on whether we thought It was In my I mean I mean, I don't mean, when I say the original, I mean, in the best sense of what criticism was supposed to do. I thought after, like, Lester Bings and 73, like the whole point of critics was just to flex for each other, like, watch this take back.

Maybe I'm talking pre-73 then. Okay. But when I say original, I mean, original original, or at least how we would like criticism to work. Is it someone who knows more than us about a cultural subject? helps us to understand the intention of the work of art and whether the art succeeds by its own, according to its own intentions. In other words, the critic has to be faceless and selfless in their evaluation.

That notion has gone out the window. And with the result, it has corrupted our appreciation of a lot of art. And instead of helping me understand, well, why is, you know, Pat Sounds, a great album. I listen to that and I think, I can't, what is this about? I need someone to help me. I feel the same way about,

I once wrote something about Norm MacDonald, who was the comedian's comedian. And I would listen to all these routines and I would be like, you know, I don't find, I never even knew back to smile. It didn't work for me. But I knew that people who knew a lot about comedy thought he was a genius.

And what I wanted was someone who knew a lot about comedy to tell me why they thought he was a genius. My first thought it was like, I don't like this, but people who know more than me do, and so my first thought was curiosity about, okay, what am I missing? So the critic's role is to explain to me what I'm missing. It maybe doesn't get me to the point where I love Norm MacDonald,

but it gets me to the point where I respect Norman McDonald, right? But when critics abandon that role, and they're simply saying, I hate this, it didn't work for me, or this art is violating some ideological predisposition I have. It's like, well, what's the point of your criticism? Like, why don't I just walk down the street and ask some random person what they think of it? Right.

So it's like the failure of that, that's why I say that when we remove evidence of something's marketplace power, essentially what we're doing is we are removing a kind of criticism, a bad criticism, and allowing us to see the art with fresh eyes. Side note. Has anyone ever sent you Norm McDonald's

Chloris Leachman roast? No. Okay, this is why I got to tell you. So, this is what I thought was genius because you've seen those like celebrity roast that they have on Comedy Central. So Chloris Leachman is getting roasted and Norm McDonnell

decides early that he's going to fall on his sword. But not in that The Aristocrats way? Are you guys familiar with the Aristocrats joke? It's a joke where if a comedian is having a bat set on stage, he will somehow signal to his friends in the back, his fellow comedians, that I felt. And he'll tell this aristocrats joke clearly freaking out the audience,

but he's, again, performing for the eight people in the back. So McDonald decides that he, is going to tell not even flat jokes but horrible jokes but he's not going to wink like there's a way where you're going to give a bad performance but maybe 30 seconds

to it and to it you'll like wink to the audience like I'm doing this on purpose like he would not portray that dude the way first of all his set was like 10 minutes and the collective look of horror on the people in the audience like you know when you're

forcing yourself to laugh at somebody like, oh, it's Norman McDonald's funny, but they were all looking like he lost it or, but he did it on purpose. Like, he never once let up like psych, I was reading these jokes from a 1940 joke. That's what he was doing.

He got a joke book from 1940 to see if it could work in the new millennial. And it didn't. And he literally didn't care. And, you know, at the time when I'm in therapy, one of the things I had to learn was

you have to care so much that you don't care. You know? Like that's zero fucks times 12 billion where you just operate in life where you literally don't care what people think and once I saw that then

I looked at this. It's a classic thing that insiders do for other insiders which is for the outsider what you're interested in is the quality of the spectacle without absent any kind of larger context. What the insider is interested in is that plus degree of difficulty. So the reason the comedians are laughing at Norm MacDonald is they understand that what he's doing is insanely difficult and courageous and they know they could

never pull it off themselves and it's hilarious to them that they know someone who would attempt it, right? You have to have to have done this. You have to have done this. You have to have to have stand-up and bombed to know why that's genius. And I've not done stand-up and bombs. So I don't know that feeling, right? So that's why it's inaccessible to me, but I still understand why it's appealing to the insider. Well, let me ask you then, could you pull off a children's book, a book for a three-year-old, where you're limited to just, if that 60 words? Do you think you go pull that off? Well, I have a three-year-old and I tell her

I make up bedtime stories. Does that count? Well, I mean, but that's in the safety of your own bubble. Like, could you release a children's book and be as effective? No. You don't think so? No. I think actually

could I do it? I mean, now that I know children's books, because I have a three-year-old, I'm aware of that 85% to 90% of them are really terrible. So I'm aware of how hard, it's really hard to make a good, like really, I don't, I'm not dissing children's books writers, but the genre is fiendishly difficult. It is. And so I don't think, absent, like, a good 10 years of immersion in that, like, even when I'm telling a story to my daughter, I told her a story for like a couple weeks. And now she's like, no, no, no, daddy.

Like, she gives me the story. It's like, we're going to do a story by cat is called Biggie Smiles. So she says, Biggie Smalls is going to be, you know, out at a party with his best friend, something, something like, go. So she doesn't even trust me. She doesn't even trust me anymore. Like, basically she's saying, Daddy, your setup suck. I have to step in here and like, this is how it's going to do it. So I've already, you know, the market has judged me and it's judged me harshly.

Maybe she'll teach you. You know, I think you could do it. A win is a win. A win. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes

of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment. And the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest, the director of the NFL. NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar, this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12 and TikTok podcast. podcast network on TikTok. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct?

I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, the lesbian, Michael Marantini. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until Justice. is served in Arizona.

Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.

Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I know that you're a passionate runner. Yeah. And I believe that in order for someone to be creatively successful, there has to be an element of breathing. that sort of releases the endorphins or whatever it is that our brain gives us. And at first I thought people who were obsessive joggers did this just for health sake. But I didn't realize that, oh, at the end of jogging, you're doing a lot of breathing, which for me, meditative breathing or DMT breathwork or advanced level breath work,

It's kind of how I do it, but what was it about running? Like, did you, at any point in your life, dream of professionally running? I was quite a good high school runner, but very, very early on, I realized that I was, you know, one massive tier below the great. You know, you reckon, even at 13 and 14, you recognize the kids you're running with who are going to the Olympics. You just, I mean, they're just on a different level. Right. then. So I never had that, that fantasy lasted a very, very, very short time. But I found it,

it's funny, it is valuable to me as an adult in a way that it wasn't as a kid for that exact reason, that I don't have any other escapes, right? I mean, every other aspect of my life is, and I have no, the kind of opportunities just to let your mind wander are so limited. And I think creativity begins in that kind of free association. So what was your creative process for the tipping point versus your creative process for

revenge of the tipping point? And that 25 year gap? Like, what's, walk me through? Do you use music? Do you psychedelics or? There's usually a story that I want to tell that's it's not the beginning of the book, but it's the

heart of the book. And I the first tipping point, it was just, I was living in New York and New York suddenly got safe, and they didn't understand why. That was as simple. I just wanted to explain that how that could happen. For this one, I was thinking a lot in writing about COVID and this idea which people couldn't understand in COVID, which was COVID was spread by one person in 100. In other words, if everyone in this room had COVID right now, only one of you would pose any substantial risk of transmitting a virus to anyone else.

And that's because, for reasons we don't understand, a tiny fraction of human beings produce, you spread COVID through what I call aerosols. In this room, there is someone who produces 100 or 1,000 X more aerosols than the rest of us. Again, we don't know why. It's just a random genetic thing. That person gets everybody sick. The rest of us do not. And nobody during COVID would appreciate this fact.

We're scientists saying it's not every one of us. It's one in a hundred. If you understand who they are, you can stop this thing cold. No one was interested in that message. And I was fascinated by that. And to me, it was this beautiful illustration of one of the fundamental principles of epidemics, which is they are profoundly asymmetrical, right?

Small number of people do all the work. So that kind of rekindled my interest in the idea. And then I started to build on that. Why do we have trouble with that? What were the implications? of the fact we overlooked it? What are other examples of this phenomenon? You know, you just kind of like build out from,

a lot of that's just kind of very random musing about what you're learning as you write about that phenomenon. So in the pandemic, which I always say 75% of the people were faced with a challenge of a pivot or a tipping point or a change in their life, which basically, unless you're under a rock, whatever your life was before March of 2020 was not the same after 2020.

Whether you regressed even further for the worst or thrived in a whole other area, was that true for you? Like, how was 2020 or 2021 different from you as opposed to what was now in your rearview mirror? It's a really interesting question. and I'm going to cop out in a sense that that's the kind of question that I don't think I have. I totally agree with you.

But I also think that I don't think I will really know the answer to that question for a long time. I think we forget how recent all this was. And not only is it recent, but also we did a spectacular job of burying this phenomenon. So it's this weird combination of something catastrophic happened, which we then very successfully swept under our... rug, like a million American side or close to a million American side, it's a hell of a lot of people, like an insane amount of people. Yeah.

And then around the world, you know, and we just kind of like decided we weren't going to talk about it anymore and we weren't going to. So it's like under those circumstances, how do I know what the impact? Well, how do I know now what the impact was? It's just give me another five years. Well, since you live in the present. and I consider you a historian, like, how does that work? Well, I live in the present with respect to myself,

which is why I'm struggling with this question. Right. Because I don't like to think about, I'm one of those people who buried it, right? Okay, well, for you then, is your infamous 10,000 hour equals perfection theory still relevant in 2025, or are we playing with a new set of rules with?

My version or the version of people, mistakenly took when they... Okay, so I was going to ask you, what's the one fact about you that people get wrong all the time? Are you tired of the 10,000 hour theory? No, I mean, it's like whatever, but it's, um...

Let me make clear. 10,000 hours of practice equals genius. That's... That's not the theory. Okay. Wait, so is that... Am I doing a Mandela effect right now? No, no. The idea was

10,000... It takes a long time. i.e. something like 10,000 hours, for talent to be manifested. I could spend 10,000 hours on a golf course, and I'm not turning into Scotty Sheffler. Okay. Right. But the idea was that it's about the insufficiency of talent, and it's about the duration of practice.

It's those two ideas in combination. And what people wanted to, the way that idea was misunderstood was that people thought I was saying, that with practice any kind of excellence is accessible. And no, that's nonsense. Who would think that? That's like nuts. You think if, could I turn myself into you with ten?

No. You have some God-given thing, which you have carefully cultivated over time. But it begins with you having some God-given thing. I could have, if we had a conversation as five-year-olds, I would have said, there's something going on with you that's really, I mean, if I was a sophisticated five-year-olds. Right. I would have said.

I'm sure you were. I would have said, and you've had this. Now that I've in the world of kids, it's always astonishing to me. Like, you meet kids and one in a hundred you realize, oh, they've got that thing. I don't know what it is yet, but this kid, you can see it, right? Like, something's going on there. And then you pray that they're going to be able to nourish it and access it. and get support for it, but it's clearly there.

Right. It's some, I was at the, my daughter's pre-K graduation. The idea there's a pre-k graduation, by the way, it's like, that is like how preposterous our society has become. They barely know they're at pre-co. How do they know they're graduating? Right. Nonetheless, this is an opportunity to shake down the parents.

But there's this kid. My daughter's playing, my daughter is like, clearly has a, got in this kid called Theo. We've been hearing about Theo for months. And Theo, like, pushes her over. She's constantly reporting on some new indignity that's been visited on her by Theo. We're like, well, why are you hanging?

Then she goes, and Theo should come over for a playday. Well, Theo is. Why? So finally I meet Theo at the playday. I'm like, oh, Theo's just got charisma. Like, he's three. And it's like, I get it. If I was you, I would be hanging out with Theo.

Like, he's in a world by himself. It's magical. By the way, can I make another comment? Yes. Can I do this incredibly tiresome thing that parents do? This is the beginning of cultural dis... I'd never figured out where cultural discernment comes from. How do you learn to decide what you like and what you don't like?

Right? It's a mystery to me. So I drive my daughter to preschool every morning. and we listen to some kids' music collection on Spotify. And in the beginning, it's all the same 40 songs on rotation. By the way, Spotify, surely there are more than 40 children's songs. Like, let's get our act together. Right, right.

But the first time around, she listens to them all. And the second time round, she says, oh, no, no, no. For like two of them, don't play that one. The third time around, she's rejecting six of them. And now she's basically rejecting two-thirds of them. And I'm realizing that what I'm witnessing is the rise of discernment, right? Like, she's figured out that it's okay to have a position on a work of art, right? And that her position, she's not asking me, Daddy, do you like it?

She's not deferring. She's affirmatively saying, like, she has turned to me. on Rafi. No more Rafi. Wait, Rafi still will think? They play them on Spotify. Oh, there is way more kids. There is way more. By the way, there's a genius guy called

Randy Kaplan. Randy Kaplan gets two thumbs up every one of his songs. Don't fill up on chips. This is a masterpiece. Masterpiece. Don't fill up on chips. Yeah. Then the chorus is kids going, why mom? Why mom? Salsa and guacam

Moli, they're just dips, they're just dips. Goes on like that. But I'm realizing that, and there's a, I'm also detecting the beginnings of a logic in her choices. She's steadily rejecting the ones that don't have that extra level of cleverness or, and it's, like, fascinating. Is she your case study now? Like, are you taking... I'm not going to do the thing that's so tiresome, which is people have a kid and then the L.A. who is right about their kid.

But I will bore you. Oh, you know you are. So. bore people in a setting where you can't leave. I will bore you stories about my daughter. So, now that I'm in conversation with you, I'm going to guess

that at three and four you were doing that exact same thing with even more sophistication. I didn't convince of it. So here's the deal. I grew up in a 3,000 album household.

But here's the rule. don't touch my stereo or else and you've got to put a lot of emphasis on those last two words and if you see what my dad looks like you know that or else comes with a heavy price to pay so as a result I think between the ages of two maybe 14 like I did not have a cynical

bone in my body and to grow up in a household where Glenn Campbell's Rhinestone cowboy and the Jackson 5 dancing machine are getting equal time. You know, Rita Coolidge and Natalie Cole are getting equal time.

The Hudson brothers and Tavares are getting equal time. I didn't know what discernment meant. The first time I heard my dad pan something, he left music altogether. So we were waiting for Stevie Wonder to

release this follow-up to songs in the Key of Life. Now, in my household, Stevie Wonder Records were like events. Like, think of War of the Worlds, Orson Wells, 1930, where we're sitting as a family

staring at the turntable and putting on side of one of the songs in the Cave of Life. And listening to all six sides of that record, going through the liner notes, and I'm five. And I've completely had an adult's understanding. of music. And he takes three years to do his follow-up record.

And, of course, he does the departure album, which, for those of you don't know, if you release an established classic, oftentimes when you have fear of follow-up and Stevie will deny this to a cow's come home, you do an album that's the complete opposite of what you were known for. And some say it's a psychological exercise of not one of the same. the face of fear. So don't make an album that's even remotely close to songs than Key of Life. Do a classical album, which is what he did without warning. So my dad was, I mean, he was so heartbroken over that record where, and defeated,

then I could touch the stereo. Like, he just stopped listening to music all together. It broke him. You wonder, broke your dad. It totally broke him. But, I mean, he was also 40 at the time, which I think in the 80s, 40 might as well have been 60. So the whole point was that I never knew what, I didn't know what cynicism was until. So you didn't have the ability to do what my daughter does, which is skip that song. But you're getting actually an even better education, which is he, your father is implicitly forcing you to find what is beautiful in a incredibly wide variety of music, which is, that is the education that allowed you to be you, right?

It is, but I do wonder if there's an alternate earth version of me that listens to all these albums completely without skipping, without the fear of I will get hit if I do this to go to the next song or skip to the next song. By the way, you mentioned Stevie and Glenn Campbell. I trust, I watched this maybe a thousand times, the YouTube of the two of them singing, Blown in the Wind.

Yes. Which is like so unblown. And it's for so many reasons, but like the sheer delight. Glenn Campbell, by the way, who's you know, is a legend in his own right, like a brilliant guitar player, like a incredible voice. He is. The absolute, the look on his face, it's like he's saying, this is, I am sitting on a piano bench next to Stevie Wonder. It's never going to get better than this. It's like, it's just, it's, and Jim Ben Campbell is like a Church of Christ guy from Alabama, whatever he's.

from. It's like he could culturally the distance between him and Stevie is thousands of miles of cultural difference and he to see the look in his eyes when like none of that matters. I see it. I'm sitting next to Stevie. I see it. And

egging him on like I mean if you've never watched this on YouTube it's like this is what you should watch when you go home. It's so magical. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep. That's me. Cliver Taylor the 4th.

You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw,

unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life. mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast.

It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This week on the Sports Slice podcast,

it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galko, joins the Sports Slice Podcast, to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar, this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else.

If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slico Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.

You doctored this particular test twice in someone, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Gregal, Westby and Michael Marantini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice has served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means.

but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up-and-coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot.

He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.

Yeah, it would not be... Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So wait, because you told me that my theory was wrong, which was 10,000 hours equal genius. So the thing is, until this moment, I will accept that that's not what you meant. But in my mind, that's what you meant. So that said, I've made a decision maybe seven months ago.

I had a life redo. And I decided that I'm going to be an amateur and with a child's mind of everything I do creatively. Now, this is coming from someone that's a studied obsessive. I got to figure out everything about the thing that I'm interested in and do, all this thorough research to it. And now I believe, do you believe that the opposite can be true now? Like someone that doesn't put in 10,000 hours,

someone that just walks into a tightrope situation and successfully gets through it? Do you think that it's even possible to sort of wield the same results of? Well, what you can get is a different, but in many ways, just as beautiful experience. So this is something that I thought about when I was running as a kid and I was a very competitive runner, I liked running and I enjoyed it, but I was also aware of how stressful and difficult it was. And then I came back to running as a much older person and was no longer an elite runner. I was now a good runner.

Right. And I found running as a good runner to be in every way superior to running when I was an elite. elite runner. And I realize that there's a category of enjoyment that is only open to you if you're not an expert. If you're encountering things, it comes back to

my mom and working girl. Seeing things with fresh eyes and being unencumbered by all of the kind of context that comes with the steady acquisition of expertise allows you to enjoy things in a really kind of simple and

pure way that maybe would be impossible if you were immersed in something. Like, my friend Charles was a screenwriter, or I have a number of screenwriter friends of mine. If you go with them to the movies and you say, and I'll say, that's a great movie. And they'll say, actually, no, no. You don't understand.

Act one was all wrong for the following reasons. If I was doing it, I do, and I'm like, they didn't enjoy the movie. They knew too much. I just thought, I don't know, thought it was great. I'm done. Right. And so I think that we underestimate those, the kind of simple joy that comes from an amateurs perspective.

And we overstate, I think, the pleasure, not the value, but the pleasure that comes from being an expert. All right. So I have a last question. I'm going to do a quick lightning around with you. So my final question is, because 2025, is defined by, I guess, what I'd dub, me search versus research. Is it frustrating to you to live in a time in which having an amplified microphone doesn't necessarily mean that you're saying anything factual at all,

like as a person who's, like, creative existence is doing research and gathering? Do you trust the next generation of writers to continue what you started 25 years ago? I mean, yes. I do find it frustrating. I did a podcast episode of Revision's History basically going after Joe Rogan for being a terrible interviewer and letting like Yahoo's on his show and like never calling them on anything. That's frustrating because he's someone with a lot of cultural authority. On the other hand, like, we're always going to have that. There was an equivalent to him in some other form, 25 and 30 and 50 years ago.

So, and I think these things are self-correcting. You can't persist indefinitely with that level of intellectual laziness and still be a part of the conversation. So I have some, I don't, I'm not a gloom and dumer about that question. Okay. However, I mean, as far as, the future of storytelling and research

especially with not the obsession, the discussion of AI technology and whatnot. Do you have any concerns as far as the value of what we used to know as facts?

Yeah. Well, AI is actually a pretty useful corrective to a lot of nonsense. So if you type do vaccines cause autism and to chat GPT. ChatGPT will tell you that they don't. Because chat GPT surveys the whole literature. Right.

It doesn't take something out of... If you ask RFK Jr. that, you'll get a different answer. So do I... In a world without chat GPT and only RFK Jr., we're in trouble, but at least now there's a corrective to the nonsense of people like him. So in that sense, I'm optimistic about it. Okay. Yeah.

Rapid-fire time. What was the first job you ever had? A dishwasher at the Stonecock Restaurant in Almira, Ontario. 15 years old, 14 years old. Favorite cereal? Don't eat cereal. Never have. Never have?

You don't know the joys of Captain Crunch? I will add to the list of things I did not grow up with. Cereal. Really? Don't do cereal. Okay. By choice or by just not? not having...

It's not... I mean, I can conceive of the utility of a bowl of cornflakes, but it's like dessert. It's not breakfast food. Right? If you offer it be cornflake crisp after a nice dinner, I would say,

yeah, that's appropriate. But why would I have it at 7 in the morning? Cereal at nighttime. Okay. It's sugar. It's a delivery system for sugar. Okay. For you, what artist do you wish that you discovered early?

Oh, that's a really good question. When you say artists, you mean very broadly? I mean, you know, I'm a music platform, but for you, acting, author... I think the greatest non-fiction writer of my generation was she died, Janet Malcolm. And I wish I'd been reading Janet Malcolm from the beginning of Janet Malcolm. I discovered her in my... 15 years ago. I wish I discovered her much before then, because she's influenced by writing a lot. Okay.

And what is next for you? My big Alabama true crime thing, and then I've been working forever on this book about Tom Bradley. Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles. What's your angle? I'm really interested in the uses of anger. The uses of anger. Yeah. The idea is that people who are disenfranchised are angry, inevitably,

but they have a series of choices about how to express that anger. And he was part of a cohort of people who grew up in South Central in the 30s, who all made very dramatically different choices about what to do with their anger. And his was the most stark, and he was the one that went furthest, and he was the one who makes the least sense to us today. And so I want to tell that He grew up with Jackie Robinson Right

Jackie Robinson goes this way with his anger Tom Bradley goes this way with his anger Super interesting It is interesting Because I think historically Black people in anger There's

Like I grew up in that You weren't allowed to be angry In my household Without paying a price for it And even today, you know For black people walk around no one wants to get to the angry black person at work or... Exactly.

You know, for me, so many years of unexpress emotions, I fear that that anger might result into something else, which is why I like... Maybe I chose music to... So, Tom Bradley, the central drama of his life, is that he honestly... He joins the LAPD in the 1940s. Okay.

And honestly believes that he can be the first. first black police chief of L.A. Because in his own eyes, he's the smartest, he's the biggest, he's the handsomest, he's the best. And all of that is true. The guy was like a superstar like you cannot imagine. And he naively believed that would be enough to allow him to be chief of the LAPD. And he gets this far and they shut him down. and he spends the rest of his life

dealing with the consequences of that rejection. Despite being the mayor of Los Angeles? Mayor is the consolation prize. He'd rather be... Oh my God. That was... This is the thing about him. That's so fascinating.

Mayor is the consolation prize. It's what he did because he couldn't be LAPD chief. And Rodney King is his... He waits 30 years for his revenge and keeps his anger in check until Rodney King allows him to go back and eviscerate the LAPD. It is like that it is all about revenge as a dish best served cold. That's his whole life.

He like didn't let anyone see how absolutely devastated and furious he was over that rejection. Despite being mayor. It was not, it was all about, it was all about. It's an incredibly, incredibly. There's a story. Oh, sorry, we're going on, but I can tell one last Bradley story. Yeah. He's the first black guy to move into a neighborhood in L.A.,

which was previously a redlined all-white neighborhood. And they change. The Supreme Court has that ruling. It allows people to move in. And there still has this resistance. He gets a white person to buy the property for him, and then they switch the thing. And he drives with his family through the streets

and all of the other people in the neighborhood come out on the sidewalk to watch the first black family move in and they are, you know, screaming at him and yelling. Right. And remember he's 6'6-250 and, like, he parks his car in his driveway, gets out, and out emerges this enormous man in his policeman's uniform. He takes out his gun and he holds it up like this.

He turns and faces everyone and marches his family into his house. And then this is the best part. the next morning, he knocks on his neighbor's door. The neighbor who is the most upset about him moving in and says, you know, ma'am, I see your lawn needs mowing, I'd like to mow your lawn. And he mows her lawn every week until she does. That's Tom Bradley.

Figure that out. I need you to write this book. Ladies and gentlemen, Malcolm Gladwell. Thank you for joining me on QLS. And I'll see you on the next go-round. See you all. The Westlove show is hosted by me. Mayor Kwestlove Thompson.

The executive producers are Sean G. Brian Calhoun and me. Produced by Brittany Benjamin and Jake Payne. Produced for IHeart by Noel Brown. Edited by Alex Conroy. IHart video support by Mark Canton. Logos, graphics, and animation by Nick Paloi. Additional support by Lance Coleman.

Special thanks. Thanks to Kathy Brom. Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandel. Please subscribe, rate, review, and share the Questlove show wherever you stream your podcast. Make sure you follow us on socials. That's at QLS. Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLS episodes, including the Questlove Supreme shows in our podcast archives.

Questlove show is a production of I-Heart Radio. A win is a win. A win is a win. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Cliford Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators,

and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Cliford Show on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford, and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft, and we've got a special guest.

The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galko, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make,

to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.

You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Ellen's, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through. the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young.

This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I bowed. will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this.

He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human