What Now? with Trevor Noah - Tight Values, Loose Ideas with Malcolm Gladwell [VIDEO]

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Malcolm Gladwell sits down with Trevor and Christina to discuss his new book, and why values should be held tightly but ideas should be held loosely. The trio also delve into the importance of television in shaping culture, and into their respective African roots (yes, Malcolm has African roots). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trev, you don't know this yet. You will someday. Well, you know, the market share capture, the brain share capture of toddlers by Sesame Street is like 95%. It's the same. Wait, it's still that high? Oh yes. That's amazing. It's a classic.

No, no, no, but I'm happy about it. I thought like it was over for Sesame Street and now it was all like Cocoa Melon and... No, no, no. Oh, that's really good. They have got to strangle. They got to... They have your kid in it yeah it's so sesame Street that's a healthy headlock a pig and cocoa

is like crack cocoa melon I outlawed cocoa yeah dangerous I don't know what's happening I call them the cocoa fellows the kid yeah don't know what's weird and I'll if I've to listen to any more cocoa melon I'm bringing back stock interest that's how much it will radicalize me. This is What Now with Trevor Noah. We were telling people, when we talked about you, I was like, do you know black people don't know Malcolm Flack, but white people don't know Malcolm Flack? Yeah, that's right.

What are you talking about? White people don't know. I'm stealth. Back in the day, I was born in the wrong century. Nineteenth century, I was fantastic for me. You would have taken the system down from the inside out. They're like, wait a minute, like historians would have uncovered a hundred years later, wait a second, he was black, what was he doing in Congress?

Talking about Malcolm being passing to white people, black people see the hair, they're like, nah, nah, nah. It's a tell. It is a tell, it is completely a tell. But now you'd, I didn't know that, when did this Nigerian thing happen? I did my 23 in me and I'm 23% Ebo. Oh my god. Which is so fantastic. And I put it on Twitter. And this is like every Nigerian on Twitter is like, oh my god, fantastic. But every single one was positive. Like it was the most, you know, inclusive experience I've ever had in my life. I was very

happy. And because... but it was obvious because Jamaicans are all Igbo, right? Yeah. Jamaica is just Nigeria. Right. It's my advanced. So you had no you had no clue that you had any Nigerian and you? Well, I guessed. Okay, but now you know definitively. Now I know. Wait, what is it? So 23% Igbo? That's a significant amount. It's not enough for the tipping point as as we've learned from this book. It's not enough, Malcolm. You're like 7% short. You can change the rules. You're Nigerians, we like to switch the rules. Nigeria's 1%.

It's one of us. So I went... Nigerians would be technically 1% or... Yeah, I, on the Jamaican front, I was at the World Championships, track championships, and I see Shelly Anne Fraser-Price, one of my heroes. So she's like this big. I go up and say, hello, my name is Malcolm.

I don't know if you know this, I'm half Jamaican. She says, there's no such thing as half Jamaican. There's only Jamaican. That's the right attitude. That is the right attitude. There's no such thing as 23% Nigerian. Yeah, I sometimes think that's what, like, if instead of the British, if, like, Africans colonized the world,

no one would have been left out. Do you know what I mean? Because like, look, no, because all other colonization was like, you're not like us. And then like, whereas Africans are very much any, anyone, black, anywhere, they just go like, no, no, you're with us. Let's go. Let's go. It doesn't matter. Even if, have you even seen those videos online of people

who can just speak the language or can do the accent well? They're like, all right, you're one of us. I'm saying Malcolm should go to Abbey estate. Don't make him a chief. Chief Gladwell. Chief Gladwell. Eegwig Malcolm Gladwell.

Oh man. Malcolm, I saw you releasing a new book and you know I'm a huge fan of yours. We've talked over the years. I'm always trying to see what Malcolm Gladwell is thinking of to give me a sense of like what I'm missing in the world. I think a lot of people think like that. As my friend David says, who you've met, David always used to say, you make people think they're smart because they read your book and then they talk to other people about

it. But, but like, this book is an interesting take on Malcolm Gladwell, like revenge of the tipping point. At first I was like, wait, is it a continuation? Is it a, but no, it feels like you are going up against you. Is it you thinking it's an exercise in self-hatred? Is that what you're saying? No, no, no, no, no.

Because here's the thing. Oftentimes people write a book that, and very seldom will it change the world. Let's start with that, right? The tipping point, I would argue, change the way people fundamentally think about many things. And then very few people would then go back and go, well, actually, let's change some of the thinking that this book basically laid the foundations for. Why do that?

Well, no one likes changing his mind more than me, first of all. I just enjoy it. My dad really enjoyed it. And as a kid, some of my greatest memories of my father, who was a marvelous character, was him just shamelessly changing his mind on his subject. Like without any explanation or apology, he just would agree, he'd talk to somebody and he, if he would always make this calculation, he would talk to someone.

And if he thought they knew even 1% more on a subject than he did, he'd just like, all right, you're right. And now I think this. And he was done. I thought it was fantastic as a child. And I, and secretly that's what I wanted. I want to be the guy who wakes up and decides, and Kate, my partner is always making fun of me on this because I will not like someone and then I'll just wake

up and they're great. Like, why don't we have them over? She's like, wait, I thought you didn't like them. So yeah, that was the past. Now I'm all over them. So I, I didn't read the tipping point after I wrote them. So yeah, that was the past. Now I'm all over them. So I didn't read the tipping point after I wrote it. And then it was its anniversary and I thought, oh, I should read it again because we were thinking of doing a new revised edition.

So I read it again. I'm like, wait a second. I wrote that? Like, I just fell, I was like arguing with the book the whole time. So that's like, I want to do a new one. That was basically what happened. Are you the opposite of the same? I'm the opposite.

And that's why I find it so interesting that you were raised by a man who like changes his mind easily. Like my parents are like deep Christians and they're not changing their mind about anything. My parents. Oh. Deep Christians. Okay. That's interesting.

They're not changed. All of us here. Okay. Super deep Christians. Here we are. Three of us are gathered in his name. Let's interesting. They're not changed. All of us here. Okay. Super deep questions. Here we are. Three of us are gathered in his name. Let's go. No, but no, not change your mind about that. Yeah.

So I'm saying that I'm used to real rigidity and rules and I want to call it dogma orthodoxy. Right? So it's surprising that I think it takes great humility, but it also must be quite painful to go back and read this book that, as Trevor said, changed the way we think about ideas and how they spread and be like, not right. I don't think it's painful. First of all, just to go back on parents for a second. So my father, my father's, can I talk about my dad? Yeah, of course. Talk about your dad.

He passed sicker seven years ago, and I wrote his obituary and I said he had strong opinions about the Bible, gardening, and mathematics, and on everything else he was open to suggestion. And I sort of think that's the right model. You've got to have your core set of things that you hold dearly. And I think you should, I always used the phrase that ideas should be held loosely. And they're not values, but ideas. Values you hold tightly, but ideas you hold loosely because stuff changes and you have, you

grow up or you're, um, you know, in the original tipping point, there's a chapter on crime, which is just, I don't know why New York City crime fell in the nineties. It's an appalling chapter. Is this like the broken windows? Yes. Jesus. Like what was I thinking? I mean, I didn't know any better, I guess, but I'm a poly. Is this like the broken windows? Yes.

Jesus. Like, what was I thinking? I mean, I didn't know any better, I guess. But it's not difficult. To me, it's very freeing to say I was wrong. I'm curious. Is it that the world, do you think the world has changed that radically in the 25 years or were the ideas wrong then?

Well, I've, I mean, the world, yes, of course the world has changed, although probably changed less than we think. I think sometimes we fetishize, you know, certain kinds of technological innovation and think we've reinvented ourselves as human beings and it's just to my mind a little bit more of the same. But mostly it's that I've moved, like the crime example is a good one. That I wrote that, Broken Windows was a fetish in New York City in the 90s. The mayor Giuliani at the time was like running around

and saying, you know, the only way to stop murder was to stop people from peeing on the sidewalk. Now, I think he was right to say that we should, people shouldn't be peeing on the sidewalk and we should clean up. That was totally right. But he made two subsequent connections. His first thing was that the way to stop people I think he was right to say that people shouldn't be peeing on the sidewalk and we should clean up. That was totally right. But he made two subsequent connections.

His first thing was that the way to stop people from engaging in that kind of behavior was to arrest them by the thousands. And then secondly, he said, and that's also, by the way, how you stop violent crime. Both of those second claims were in retrospect, preposterous, right? In the moment in the late 90s, when we had just witnessed New York go from being one of the least safe big cities in North America to one of the safest, we were sort of willing to accept, to pay any price for that improvement in safety

and accept any explanation. And that was the fever that I was caught up in. I was like, okay, we're arresting hundreds of thousands of young black men in the Bronx and Brooklyn, but better that than being killed. That's what we were all thinking. And then, you know, I subsequently learned, this is actually an incredibly interesting history.

You know, what happens is a judge stops stopping Frisco New York. We go from stopping 700,000 people in one year to stopping 20,000. And everyone says, including the judge who stopped it, crime's going to go back up. And what happens? Crime falls another 50%. And everyone's like, oh my God, not only was stop and frisk irrelevant to the crime drop, maybe it was preventing us from using police resources in a way that actually helped solve.

So we learned this happened in 2012. And my point is, if you lived through that learning moment in 2012 when we took away Stop and Frisk and crime fell another 50%, if you lived through those next five years and you didn't change your mind, then you are morally bankrupt. You have to't change your mind, then you are morally bankrupt, right? You have to have changed your mind at that point.

So you have to acknowledge, it's not wrong to be wrong in 1996, it's wrong to not change your mind after we learn something crucial in those post-stop and frisk years. It's like you have to respond. The price of playing the game of ideas in the world is you have to stay on your toes and respond to new evidence as it arises.

That's the, you wanna play this game, that's the rule. Okay, here's the thing. I think there are two things that you don't do that probably help you. One, you don't make it your identity. So you wrote about broken windows, but then there were some people who shaped their lives around broken windows.

And then secondly, you didn't implement any policies. And I think that's probably one of the scariest things. Like politicians in America are perfect examples. Very few of them are able to say, yeah, that was wrong. We used data that at the time was misread or misunderstood or we used what we had and we made an incorrect decision. They don't say that. They go like, no, if you look at what we were trying to do and we still, because everyone's afraid to say, I mean, just in life, everyone is afraid to say, I was wrong.

Like listening to you right now, I don't know how many times I've heard human beings say that. Just go like, I look back and go like, damn, what was I thinking? I mean, I find it so weird. And also, it's so long ago. This was the late 90s. I'm older than you guys. But it's like, have you looked at your high school yearbook, or like it's just everything about it is cringe-worthy. I mean, it should be fine to look back on your 25 years in the past self and have an issue. I would hope you would have an issue. I think it's because so much of the world that we live in currently is built, say, as a foreigner coming to America, so many times the constitution is reference and the amendments are reference.

Our world is built on ideas that sometimes emerged thousands of years ago and we refuse to revisit them in the same way you're revisiting Tipping Point. But the funny thing about the amendments for me is the name itself. Like whenever people get angry, you know, like you talk about the amendments, you go like, oh, you changed them and then like, you don't change the amendment. And I'm like, amendment means change. It literally means change. But they don't want any more change.

Yes. But what I'm saying is like, that's, that's what I find ironic in that situation is like, I agree with you. Constitution old document, but it's a living document, you know, for like, it was one of the first documents that was created where they said, Hey, the whole purpose of this thing is that you're supposed to change it because look, we think what we think right now. It's almost like the forefathers looked at each other and they were just like, I don't know about these wigs. I don't know about these shoes. So I don't know about these ideas. So let's let people

change them. And like, I've seen, I mean, I don't know if you like read reviews about your work. Some people almost seem angry at you. They seem angry that Malcolm Gladwell would change, because here's my theory. So I love changing my mind. Maybe that's why I like you so much. But I think some people base their ideas on other people's ideas. And so then if you change your idea, they get so angry at you because they're like, no! You... You're making them do work.

Yeah. You have to revise your opinion of them and that seems like an imposition. I think that's what, as opposed to kind of, you know, it's the same way when a musician makes a kind of change in their style. Yeah. And there's always a set of fans who are appalled by this. Like they don't like they want the musician to be kind of frozen in amber. Yeah.

To be the same person they encountered for the first time at 16. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how dare you use an electric guitar or whatever the argument is. Yeah, it is a funny, I don't, I mean, I think you, the question is, who is your obligation to as a writer? Is it to your audience or is it to yourself? And I think it has to be, first and foremost, it has to be to yourself. We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break. So, so now let's, let's play, I want to play a Malcolm Gladwell game in this moment here.

So someone might go, but Malcolm, how can I trust this? Because now, like, you just wrote a book that says I shouldn't trust what you wrote in the other book, and then how do you, like, do you know what I mean? It's not that you shouldn't trust what I said in the other book. It's that I've moved on. It's just not where I am at this moment. So you're saying like the, it's not that the ideas are wrong. It's that we should be able to change our, we should be able to evolve our ideas based

on new information. I haven't repudiated them. They're not who I am now. Right. It's, you know, in the same way, it wasn't to go back to my dad, for example, when my dad changed his mind, sometimes it would be, he would go from A to Z. But sometimes it was just,

there was an earlier version of himself that believed this, and then that self was gone. And he was now someone who believed this new thing. It was just a kind of, it's just about accepting the evolution. The thinking involves evolution. You're somebody, you're a journalist, you know, and you're used to digging and borrowing and you know, finding old tapes and newspaper articles and like for the average person,

like where do they get the new ideas? Where do they even get the opportunity to change their minds? You know? This is interesting. I've a friend of mine, I was playing the game of, I love playing the Magic Wand game where you could wave a magic wand and change one thing, what would it be in the world? And her answer was to make everyone in the world for one year trade places with someone else in the world. So just imagine a big random, everyone in the

world puts a random swap and then you take, everyone in the world puts a hat. Random swap. And then you take, you put your address, you put your address in a hat, and then you pull out a different address, and you gotta live there for a year. And her argument would be- This only works for people with addresses, by the way. I'm just gonna point this out.

If you're unhoused. Yeah, if some people are just on the street, you just have to put where you were on the street, and then someone switches with you. Yes, yes. And her argument would be that this would be the single greatest way to solve, like, the single greatest short-term solution to mankind's problems. By the way, I think she's

100% right. This is such a genius idea. But my point is, if you want to participate in the world in a kind of ethical way, is I have, you have to do a version of this in your life. So I have a simple thing I do, which is I try and change the people I follow, a very small number of people are on Twitter, and I constantly change them. And so I cycle through, like, I'm always, like once a week or something, I drop two or three people and add two or three people, just trying to, because you get exposed to new. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I try to get the, I also want,

so I follow the Ukrainian war, I don't know why, really closely, but entirely through these ex-military guys who are obsessed with logistics. I love these guys. And like, it's stuff I would never in a million years have heard of before. It's not, none of what they say is in the news.

It's all so weird and super interesting. My favorite guy is this guy, Trent Chilenko. I love Trent Chilenko. I want to meet him one day. Who's like, by the way, he's been saying that Russians are gonna lose for, he's been saying this since the beginning of the war. And he had this great tweet early in the war

where he found a photograph of a Russian transport carrier, like a truck, that was stuck in the mud. He zeros in on the tires. Oh, I remember this. Yes, I remember this. Made in the USSR. And he was like, they've lost. They can't win.

Their tires are from before the wall fell. And he goes this whole rant about tires. But how you gotta be rotating the tires. If the truck's in storage, the tire's gonna break apart. It's like, if there's tires of that, that says that your this doesn't work and you don't have this.

And I was like, so that's like, you have to keep exposing yourself. That's how you learn about what you need to update. So now when I read something conventional about the war, I have a slightly different perspective because I have trends in my head. And I'm asking a different set of questions about than I would have otherwise.

I'm not, it's not that I'm a skeptic. It's just that I just, I have a different, I'm looking at it from a different perspective. What you've described, I think you have this basic level of intellectual curiosity. And Trevor said earlier that the reason you can hold your ideas loosely is because your ideas aren't your identity. Yeah. Now I would say, it feels in this specific moment for a lot of people,

that their ideas are actually a huge part of their identity. They make up their identity. So if they're not gonna come apart from that idea, because it's like, who am I? There's a vacuum after that. So what do we do when we're engaging with people in our lives who ideas have become their identity, and you're trying to get them to see another point of view

or point them towards something else, and they're like, oh, you're just a crazy liberal, or you're just a crazy conservative. Yeah. I thought about this recently because I go to this little coffee shop near my hometown upstate. And there's always these two old guys who are in a corner. They're there every time I go there.

And they're always having an argument about, not an argument, a long discussion about movies. They're movie junkies. And they have encyclopedic knowledge. And I eavesdrop on them all the time. an argument, a long discussion about movies. They're movie junkies. And they have encyclopedic knowledge and I eavesdrop on them all the time. And I realized that there's something really lovely there, which is that they have clearly a huge part of their identity

is about the enjoyment and appreciation of that particular art form. And I would imagine that if one of those guys was a Trumper Maga type and the other was a diehard liberal, it wouldn't matter because they had found this area that was more important to their identity and that where they could find common ground and where they could find each other,

find joy in each other's company. And it's those kinds of spaces that I feel have been eroded. I use the movie example for a reason, which was for the longest time in many cultures around the world, the movies occupied this huge position in the way people related to the world. People talk to people who grew up in New York in the 30s and 40s, they would see a movie every day. And that's what they would talk about on the playground. And that's what they would, you know, and sports function in that way.

I sometimes think that what we need actually weirdly is more sports, not less sports, because sports are one of the few things that can occupy a big space and bring people together. And you can have a long conversation with someone who has never come up. Even my parents would be a good example. My white father, black mother, a lot of people look at them and say, you guys are so different. That's not how they organized their life. They thought they were exactly the same. Two committed Christians who, you know, their fathers read the same books. I think that's the issue. It's just not good to spend all your time wallowing in political arguments. But I also think it's this. I think,

you know, I remember a friend of mine describing to me, he worked as a computer programmer. And I remember one day, he was explaining the concept of the second system effect. The second system effect is what they teach programmers and coders about when working on a program and then moving it to the next version. And they go, you always have to consider the things that might happen that you don't know might happen because you've now changed the program over. Because you always think of what you're updating, you always think of what you're improving, but you seldom think of what that could cause as a knock-on effect

to what you didn't want, an unintended consequence. And oftentimes that's what happens, right? You'll see it on your phone all the time. They'll go new software, and then very quickly afterwards, they'll be like, new software on top of the new software, because we just realized that what the new software did was it made the keyboard unusable when you were sending a text to certain people

in a group chat. That's a second system effect, right? And that gave me a whole new way to think about life, because now I will go, oh, sometimes we make a change. That is oftentimes an improvement, by the way, but we don't think of what the possible second system effect could be. Like streaming and the proliferation of TV shows and like, you know, like on demand.

You can watch Breaking Bad when you want to watch Breaking Bad and have you watched Game of Thrones? I'll watch it when I, you know what I mean? It's given you so much choice. What a lot of people don't realize is it's robbed us of communal consumption. But then what have we all seen? The debate. Oh, I saw the debate. Oh, I saw the debate. Did you see the debate? And so unfortunately now, I don't think it's politics so much as it's live. Live is the only thing that still exists in society that forces us to experience it at the same time.

And so it's not sports, and it's not politics. It's just these are the final vestiges of live television. The debates are live. The election is live. The Olympics. The Trump assassination is live. The Olympics are live. The Super Bowl is live.

But I think what it's done is it's robbed us of shared realities, is what I think. You know, I used to watch the same TV shows as my parents, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. And inversely, they had to watch the same shows I watched. So sometimes my mom would be watching the cartoons or the sitcoms that I was watching before we got to the news or like a murder movie documentary or whatever thing. But we had ATV and it played in linear time.

So we just had to do it together. And I actually think that's one of the things that we're experiencing in society is like less live. I'm so, I realize now when I'm outside of live, like many people, I'm lost. Yeah. I mean, I I'm lost. Yeah. I mean, I watched Perfect Couple. Yeah.

Why did I watch Perfect Couple on Netflix? I've got like five episodes in, I'm like, I cannot believe that I have just devoted this. Now it's time for F1 Love, a segment where I get to talk all things F1 and why you should be excited for the F1 Las Vegas GP. So if you know anything about me, you know I love a few things in my life. I love video games, I love tech, I love traveling, I love copious amounts of ice cream, and there are a few things I love more than Formula One.

I've been watching Formula One my entire life. I started watching it with my dad, I think I told you this, but yeah, it's just, it is one of the most exciting, crazy, anything can happen sports in the world. And as I've grown, I've grown to appreciate it more because, you know, F1 athletes apparently are the fittest athletes in the world. They've got some of the strongest necks, which I know is a weird thing to think is cool,

but I do. Because apparently their necks can sustain like three, four or five G, which is pretty insane if you know what a neck can usually handle but anyway I'm really excited because Formula 1 used to only be in Europe and now one of the most exciting races of the season is in Las Vegas. Formula 1 has two kinds of races you've got the races that are on tracks and so those ones are really fun and fantastic but then every now again, you'll have a race that's on the streets of the city that it's in.

And the F1 race in Las Vegas is one of those. The cars are out on the strip racing around. I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of miles per hour. The stuff you wish you could do, they do it for real. And Vegas is the best place for it. You get to go out, you get to see the drivers over the weekend, you get to hear the cars. And if you've never heard an F1 car, you haven't lived.

It literally sounds like the end and the beginning of the world at the same time. If you get a chance, try and go through the pit lanes if you have that opportunity, it's amazing. You get to see the cars up close, you get to see the technology, you get to see like, even the tires, the tires are so impressive. But if you don't get the backstage experience, just go to the race.

Wear a hat, cheer for a team, see people drive cars the way they're supposed to be driven. And then think to yourself, I could do that at home, but do not do it at home. That was F1 Love brought to you by Las Vegas, hosting the upcoming F1 race, November 21 to 23. Tickets are available now by visiting f1lasvegasgp.com slash tickets. There's got to be one chapter in this book that you, um, that you enjoyed writing the most. Like you, you, yeah, you have like a guilty joy when it comes to certain topics. This is something I know about you. You have like a, you'll have like a giggle in you. You have like a mischievous feeling in you where you're like, oh, I love that I'm getting into this.

So what's like the most Gladwell chapter in this book? It's the Harvard chapter. The Harvard chapter for the admissions? Yeah. Let's talk through that. It's all about this strange fact that there is no university in the United States that has more Division one varsity sports than

Harvard. So everyone thinks that the sports obsessed schools are like in the South. No, no, no, the most sports obsessed school is Harvard. Not only that, they're so obsessed with that they, if you're an athlete, they have the front doors for smart kids who compete and it's really hard to get in the front door. They have a back door for athletes and rich people. Of course. Yeah, of course. Of course. And the back door is way easier to get in.

The simplest way to get into Harvard is to be a good athlete, not to be a good student. So the question is why would they care so much about sports that they would like create a special back door for them and also play so many? And I think the answer is in the kind of sports they're playing. So what sports are, if they have all these rowing, middleweight or light, heavyweight and lightweight rowing. And each team is like, what is it? 25? I have forgotten some incredible number fencing, fencing, sailing. Oh, I don. How do you feel about sailing? Sailing. Tennis.

Tennis. Interesting, tennis. Now rugby, rugby, you guys who are Africans, particularly you, you guys are serious rugby playing people. Yeah, yeah. Understand that in the American context. Oh, no. Yes.

Rugby is a very different animal. They're not playing rugby in, you know, South Chicago. Field hockey, squash, you can see what I'm going to mean. Yeah. So they reserve. You add up all those numbers, men and women, right? Coaches, kids sitting on the bench. You add all those numbers up, and you

see that they have reserved an entire huge pool of admission slots for white people with enough money they have reserved an entire huge pool of admission slots for white people with enough money to be good at white people sports. It's the whole thing is like so hilariously obvious. And like they're pretending, for years they've been pretending, oh no, no, we believe the athlete brings something special

to the camp. No bullshit. Like I do this thing with tennis. In order to play division one tennis in this country, you must have played junior tennis. In order to play the Vision One tennis in this country, you must have played junior tennis. In order to play junior tennis, your parents have to, I did the math, have to spend at a minimum $50,000 a year on your game and probably north of a hundred grand.

When you add up all the things you have. So basically what Harvard is saying is, we've got whatever it is, 12 spots on our tennis team, which we are reserving for people who have parents capable of spending $100,000 a year on their games. It's like, I mean, if you don't do this, if you have an elite school that just takes the smartest kids, what that means is your culture is going to turn over with each new wave of smart immigrants that come.

So you're going to be all Jewish in the 50s, then you're going to be all Korean now, and you're going to be all Nigerian in like 10 years. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's an amazing thing. But you can see if your conception of what your school is, is a place where you have lots of preppy kids in blazers. Yeah. You can't play that game. Yeah.

Because you're going to wake up one day and you're going to have a lot of Ebo shouting at loud voices running around your campus. And that's unthinkable if you're- It's funny that you say that because I've noticed that in traveling the world, there are some cities in the world that have made it so that the area, like certain areas are sort of dictated by who can just afford to buy there, right? So like there'll be parts of London, for instance,

where I went like 20 years ago, and then it was like a certain group of people, and then all of a sudden it would be Russian, and then it would be this, and then it would be that. And I was just like, oh wow, this whole area switched up because the money is something that can shift to people and to cultures. But now rowing and sailing, and that doesn't change.

That does not change. Do you know what I mean? Let me ask you a question, Malcolm. Like in the book, there are many moments where you talk about like, it's not necessarily the tipping point, but it's like some of the larger things that made something happen. Like for instance, you talk about Will and Grace, and you go, this is like the show that changes people's perspectives on gay people in America, et cetera.

And then some people go like, oh, but what about Ellen? Ellen was on before that. And in the opioid section, when you talk about the Sackler family you're like this is you know the the story they told and the passive voice when they're defending themselves and you and you tell the story where some people might read it and go like oh but I actually think the issue is the doctors like how do you choose to hone in or where do you think you've actually found the real lever that that has moved society or shifted in a certain direction versus others. So the Willem Griswold, that was really interesting. So there's a really brilliant woman whose work

I read and I love by the name of Bonnie Dow, who does this kind of meta analysis of television shows and their importance. And she looked at the way, including in Ellen, the way that television had described and discussed gay relationships. And she said that up until Will and Grace, every time gay people were talked about, even if they were talked about

on television in a positive way, a series of rules were in place. The emphasis on the show was always about how straight people reacted to the gay person, not on the gay person themselves. The second thing was that the gay person's gayness was always a problem that had to be solved. And the third thing was that the gay person was always in isolation.

So she looks at Ellen, she says, Ellen, yes, had a gay character, first openly gay character on network television, but those three rules were still in effect. The whole, when Ellen comes out in that pivotal sitcom show from whenever it was, all the rules are in effect. Her gayness is a problem her friends have to solve. The whole show is about her straight friends

dealing with the fact that Ellen is like complicated their lives. And she has no gay community on those shows, it's just her. Will and Grace comes along and breaks all three rules for the first time on television. Will's got a community, it's got Jack, right? And that whole like, his gayness is not a problem to be solved. It's never, it's never been a problem, it's just a fact, right? And the show is not about straight people reacting to Will. It's about been a problem, it's just a fact, right? And the show is not about straight people reacting to Will. It's about Will and Grace together reacting normally to,

and that makes that show revolutionary. This is, and I, that argument to me is so, and if all you do is watch Will and Grace without the benefit of that kind of analysis, you miss it. And there's an incredible book that was written about the way Hollywood treated homosexuality, All you do is watch Will and Grace without the benefit of that kind of analysis. You miss it. Yeah. And there's an incredible book that was written about the way Hollywood treated homosexuality, pointing out that look at all the movies in which gay people appear from the 60s through the end of the 90s.

And this guy just counts up what happens to the character, the gay character. And like in 60% of the cases, the gay character dies. In 10% they commit suicide. In 10% they drive a drug overdose. Like Hollywood just killed them off. Right. Like that's what they did. And you were allowed to feel sympathy for them.

But they were always, it was always this dreadful burden. Right? And Will and Grace, it's not a burden. It's just like, he's just a... It just happens to be part of their lives. It's just part of their lives. And that is so, like, I feel like it is no coincidence. That's right around the time when the country wakes up

one day after flipping out about gay marriage, wakes up one day and just doesn't even say, I love gay marriage, just shrugs and says, and says, are we really gonna fight about this? And it just goes away. So it's actually funny, you know, when I was reading through that chapter and when I was reading through some of the chapters about like over stories that you talk about, you know, the story that is over every other story that we're telling ourselves.

I don't know if you've watched it. There's an animated movie. I think it's Mitchell's versus the Machines. I think it's called. And it's a story of this family that goes up against like machines taking over the world. And one day I was having a conversation with some group of friends and someone said to me like,

oh, I hated that movie. And I was like, really? It was a great movie. They're like, yeah, it was great, but I didn't like that at the end we learned that the main protagonist was a gay character. And I was like, why not? And they were like, why didn't we know from the beginning? I feel like you just tried to sneak it in. that the main protagonist was a gay character. I was like, why not?

And they were like, why didn't we know from the beginning? I feel like you just tried to stick it in. And I was like, are you pro? And she's like, no, I'm pro gay rights. And that's why I feel like it should have been. And then I said, I think that's been the problem with a lot of programming actually, is that because Hollywood as a whole,

and obviously I'm using a big umbrella here, but because Hollywood as a whole, and obviously I'm using a big umbrella here, but because Hollywood as a whole, people forget is a business. They make these like fake stories and fake moves that are artificially trying to jump on trends that are not trends. Do you get what I'm saying? So they'll be like,

oh wow, gay people are becoming very popular in society. We need to make a gay show. And they're like, what is a gay show? And they're like a show where a person uses their gayness to make sure that the community center doesn't get shut down. And it's like, guys, that's not a show. That's not a thing. Gay people are not using their gayness to do,

do you get what I'm saying? And I actually think that becomes part of the problem is like now we are not witnessing people as human beings. The story is about you are black. And so now because of your blackness, you must make the black blackity black. I was like, no, man, just make a story. And to your point, Will and Grace, it's like, yeah.

Will and Jack were just, they were gay, but the story wasn't like, what gay thing gays them today. It was like, no, it's just a story. And you got to know them as human beings. And the show is interesting because it puts a finger on, the issue fundamentally was not that by the early 21st century, most Americans thought that there was something pathological about being gay,

or they had some revulsion. No, it was quite specific. They did not believe that gay people were capable of the same kind of relationships as straight people. It was that specific. It was about relationships, and that's why marriage was being denied. And that show is about a successful relationship

involving a... And in the previous sort of, to reach your point, Trevor, the preaching us assumed the problem was specific to something about the gay person and the way they practice the library. No, no, no, no, no, it was a separate thing about could they participate in something that straight people have been participating in

for thousands and thousands of years. And just getting people to say, oh yeah, they can participate. That's all we needed. Yeah. You didn't need to win the bigger battle. Right. I've seen a few times how, so like for me, this is purely anecdotal, but in New York, I play football, I play soccer with a bunch of guys from all over the world, literally all over the world,

all different walks of life. We have all of Africa on the team, and then we have Europe, and then we have Eastern Europe, and then we have like, sometimes we'll have like Australia and Asia, and then America, obviously. But it'll be a collection, 22 guys from everywhere coming together. And one of the fascinating things I've noticed is we have built our relationships and our friendships and our perceptions of each other and each other's peoples

without ever speaking about them. Does that make sense? Yeah. When we come to the game, we play the game. I judge the other people by how they play the game and they judge me by how I play the game. Badly, well on a day, terribly. But that's how we know each other.

So you're like, Latif, why don't you do this? You always do this. Joe, Joe, why are you doing this? Oh no, zero technique, you have zero technique. Why are you doing this? And it's like, shut up, Joe. And then like, what I realized the one day was almost magical, is like, everyone on that team

has a human example of somebody from another country. So if you say to them, what are you Ugandans? They go like, oh man, I know this guy Joe, he's from Uganda. And it's like, oh, what are you, then it's just like, you know him as a human being. Does that make sense? And I think sometimes like in these stories,

we forget that we don't get to know people as human beings because we don't see them doing human being things. And then we give ourselves like the full, we give like the, I mean, when I say ourselves, I mean, like, let's say the dominant group, you get to exist in your fullness. And then everyone who's on the margins has to exist only in one area.

It's like, all right, gay people, you get a day of pride, and then the rest of it is for straight people. And even then we're gonna be like, why do you get a day? And you're like, well, every day is a straight pride day. You know, every day is like chinos and terrible shirts. It's like... Also, the soccer thing is great because the key to making that magic happen is to have everyone, give everyone a job to do.

You're all busy. That's why it works. Yeah. Right? That's the kind of, I like, I always with this, the busyness thing, if you, you're all focused on the game, you're exhausted, you're running up and down, who is time for all the nonsense? Don't go anywhere because we got more What Now after this. Malcolm, I'm curious. You say you went back, red tipping point, and you're like, this is appalling, right? I'm interested about why it wasn't just an amendment, because most

people would do like, there's a revised edition and you write a chapter and you say, like, summary. Why is it revisiting and it's a whole book? Because I'm crazy. Okay. Because I don't have enough to do because having two kids apparently is just really easy and I can do, you know. You have time. I have, I got time.

I'm loving watching the difference in a man's perspective on having kids and a woman's. Malcolm's like, yeah, it feels like you have more time and Christiana's like, there's no time left. My life is over. I wrote another book. Malcolm's like, yeah, it feels like you have more time. And Christiana's like, there's no time left. My life is over. I'm like, I wrote another book. No, I have, I've worked it out that I have,

I have 45 minutes to myself a day. Between 10 and 10.45, that's my time. And you write your book. That's all I got, that's all I got. And you write your book. No, no, no, no, no. No, I don't know. I also thought it would be fun. I've been enjoying myself tremendously

over the last... I've had a kind of... Ever since I started podcasting stuff, it's loosened me up about... I'm a lot less precious about the stuff I do and I'm doing different kinds of stories and I'm so I just I my position now is why not yeah and why not do something it sounds like it'll be interesting who knows what will happen the turning point was for me was um when I started the podcast and I started doing weird show like shows on cranky kind of you know going after golfers or whatever. And I was like, that was really fun. Like, I didn't realize that what kind of thing. And then I did that audiobook with Paul Simon, with my friend Bruce, which, you know, I don't really know that much about music. I know I like Paul Simon. And we just sat down with him and it was just so, we did hours and hours of

interviews with him. And it was and it literally changed my life. I just realized, wow, I thought I was in this for the writing, I'm not. I'm in this because I like talking to people. I like interviewing them, that's what I like. And that, when I realized that, I was like, oh, this clarifies everything. I shouldn't be obsessing about the, what's, you know,

my, how I'm gonna make a story out of this. I should be obsessing about the interview. Yeah. The conversation. And so I did it again this summer with this incredible woman. And I met with her like eight times.

And she's someone who deals with trauma. I'm gonna get emotional. She was involved with a guy on death row who, and she fails to save him and he gets killed by the state. And I wanted to know what was going through her head when he died. That's what I wanted to know. And I decided I was gonna take the long path. We took 16 hours, whatever it was, to get there. And then we kind of got there and I was completely overwhelmed. I couldn't stop crying. I just was, it was so, and then I interviewed, I went back and I interviewed the, it was so unprofessional. I interviewed the lawyer, the guy's lawyer, and I had him tell the same story. And I couldn't stop crying.

I just, I had to end the interview. I said, sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, I can't, I can't. It's just, but it was because I just made that investment and I had just sat and listened, right? That's, I realized at the grand old age of 61, I realized that's what I want to do. Right? That's, and there's a lot of that in this book. It's a lot of those just sitting and listening to people, like, and kind of trying to make sense of them. What I'm hearing you say is something that I feel like we could all work on a little bit more. And that is being a little less serious about how we see ourselves in the world.

Because I think of the different parts, the different universes that Malcolm Gladwell could have been in. You could have been someone that got more serious and more prescriptive and you know, you could have written a book about, and now let me tell you, it's 20,000 hours and here's what else you've got to do. It's not just the windows, it's the doors and the floors and the sidewalks and you know, you could, no, you really, and I think there are people who do that because it becomes again going back to it becomes their identity so they're like I've achieved success in this I must hold on to it and I

need to do more of it and then the second part of it is we forget to have like fun we forget the fun side of life we forget the enjoyment we forget the people are very like serious about things I even noticed I was falling into it. Like if you asked me a question, I would give you like the serious answer first, but I'm not that person actually. You know? And I've noticed it starting in America to be honest. And like South Africa is very far behind, thank God. But like when I'm in South Africa, I realize I'm like, I'm taking this far too seriously. I'm taking all of it too seriously. Do you know what I'm saying? Can I tell you in South Africa, I realize I'm like, I'm taking this far too seriously. I'm taking all of it too seriously. Do you know what I'm saying?

Can I tell you about South Africa story? It's very funny. Yeah, for sure. I know I forget the president of South Africa. His name is Ram... Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa. So I'm at this conference in South Africa.

Actually, that's when I texted you because I was walking around, kicked down and I was like, white people know their real estate. And then Trevor's like, yes, they do. So I go to this conference and Ramaphosa is speaking, gets up in front of the stage. He's like, and the lights go out, right? Because the power is always going off in Cape Town. And then there's silence. And then you hear Ramaphosa saying, it's all my fault. And the whole room just starts laughing. I was like, And the whole room just starts laughing. I was like, how many leaders of major countries

in the world would make a self-deprecating joke at that moment? Because it's been a huge political issue for him. It's been a huge issue. And so what does he do? And it's like, it was hilarious. It's just hilarious. I was like, this is off topic,

but I was chatting with all these people at this conference and I'm talking about, I was like, haven't a lot of people been leaving South Africa? Aren't you worried? This guy says? Because it's not the best thing. It's like the only people left in South Africa now are the people who want to be here. Yeah. I thought that was fantastic. I totally changed my perception of, it's like, that's right. They're the ones who are tough enough and interested and committed.

And like, at his point was like, let them go. They'll, you know, we're here. I, it them go. You know, we're here. It's beautiful. Niamh. Malcolm, if you want to revisit another book, I'll put Blink aside because Blink is one of my favorites. Outliers. This 10,000 hours rule.

As a parent, I know a lot of people who've been parents for more than 10,000 hours. They are terrible. Terrible. And they raise rotten kids. Look at the world we live in. So many broken people who need therapy. than 10,000 hours. They are terrible. Terrible. And they raise rotten kids. Look at the world we live in. So many broken people who need therapy. I think we need to go back and look at the 10,000 hours.

No, no, you're absolutely right. I, you know, the, do you do this? I've started to do this now and it's so terrible. Is I now with no standing whatsoever other than three years as a parent, I'm just openly critiquing people's parenting. Yeah, I'm very judgmental. Judging is fun.

It's so fun. I have to stop myself. You do it like, yeah, you see later. You gotta stop it. I prefer a go, it makes it worse. Oh yeah. Have you found that your children have changed how you even look at data or storytelling or stories? There's zero connection between

Any intellectual idea I've ever held and my parenting. I've this is nothing that's so no, no, I'm not saying you're parenting. I mean more Them being in your life and then like for instance I'm watching your face while you speak about them. Every mention of them, even the idea of them, your face lights up in a different way. You laugh, you giggle, you, there's a different side of you that comes up. So I'm asking, how have they affected the way you see data

or stories or the world or even your impact on it? How you approach your work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they always ask women this question. So I like that Trevor's asking a man this question. Yeah. Well, I always thought that they're free content. I find them just endlessly hilarious, and it makes it very difficult for me to take

other things as serious. Oh, there you go. So it is part of like, I just, they just become the center of your universe and like everything else sort of fades away in importance. Any disappointment I have is irrelevant to them. It's just so liberating. Like, you know, they just, you know, my three-year-old this morning just wanted to like draw.

She was making a picture for, she has a crush on the girlfriend of the nanny. It's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. And she was making a picture for them. And she, that's like, that's what she, you know, and like everything else kind of, but it has, but what she's, you know, and like, everything else kind of, but it has, but I do understand, you do understand how powerless you are. It's just like, it's hilarious.

It's this surrender. He just surrendered. But our kids are so different. My four-year-old, through the most explosive tantrum in the Grove the other day, and the old man sitting next to us, switched off his hearing aid. Wow. He switched it off. And I was like, that's judging my parenting. And the old man sitting next to us switched off his hearing aid. Wow. Wow. He switched it off and I was like, that's judging my parenting. That's epic.

But he's great. He's great. But he has this moments of like, he becomes really serene. He's got high spirits and you should have high spirits. That's a good sign. But then it was also, I have to surrender. You know that gentle parenting bullshit. Just ride the wave and it will end.

You know what, in a few years, maybe in a decade, we'll get to relook at our parenting today and we'll be like, huh, maybe we could have been a little harsher. Maybe we could have. Yeah, but I have a theory. Trevor wants to bring back beating kids. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, let me be on the record. Let me be on the record.

Before we wrap this up, let me be on the record and say, I do not believe that children, I don't believe that parents should ever hit their kids. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. However, I do think other people should be allowed to hit your kids. Because then we've created, it's a community thing. And it's like parents can signal to other people that they need their kid disciplined then there's no conflict in your child's mind between love and discipline let's think we don't have to solve it now you go do the research you think about as a parent I'm gonna go formulate the idea and then we'll come

back I'm totally back to the village I wish someone else would come over and say no you're could be helping each other 100% if I see you across the room at some restaurant any I'm fine. Signal me from afar. I will come over and I will do that for you. Malcolm, I know you've got to go now. I want to say thank you, man. Thank you for spending the time with us.

This is really fun. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you, Malcolm. Great. That was lovely, guys. I want to see pictures now. Oh, yeah, I'll show you pictures.

I'll get my phone. What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jodie Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackl, Claire Slaughter is our producer. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now?