Malcolm Gladwell Returns

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Oh, I didn't think about this.

Well, I have mixed feelings about being Conan.

Now, wait a minute.

Why would you say that?

I'm a huge admirer of your work.

Can I do a long explanation of why I have?

Is it going to be another book?

No, no, no, no. Sure.

Folly's here, hear the yell.

Back to school, ring the bell. Brand new shoes, walk and lose.
Hi and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I've got Matt Gourley with me here.
Hi. Scribbling away something.
I don't know what he's doing. What are you doing? Last Will and Testament.
And I've got Sonam of Sessian here. Yes.
You know, we're getting into the holiday seasons. Yeah, we are.
And I have a question for you because this is something that hit me recently. I don't often reveal my interior life, my emotions, but I'm going to get vulnerable here for a moment, which is, as you guys know, I'm an empty nester now.
Both my kids are in school. You're also an empty soul guy too, aren't you? Yeah, empty soul, yeah, yeah.
But that's been, you know, whole life. But I didn't expect to feel this way, but I remember feeling this way at Halloween.
I walked by some houses and they were all decked out with, you know, skeletons and witches and things like that. And one of them had, there's this spider that plops down if it senses a presence.
Have you seen that? Yeah. It just goes, it makes a little noise and its eyes light up a little bit.
And I just had this really strong memory of my kids watching me put all that stuff out and being really excited and saying, where's the spider? And me going and getting, you know, there's the, you can get the fake graves and you can get the skeleton hand that comes out of the ground. My excitement came from their excitement of watching me do it.
And, you know, they're not, they're in college now. And so we're not doing that to our house.
And then I walked around and i had that pang of it made me sad do you know what i mean i had a moment of oh that's that's done i like not decorating i'm not a decorator and now i have to because i have boys my boys and i'm just like come on oh really it I gotta go get a web. Gotta get a web and like a spider and stuff.
No, I don't want to do that. Also, where are you gonna put all of it? There's just so much storage.
You're a terrible person. It's not even that.
It's just, do you like it? You can't like it. We're big decorators for holidays.
But I will say that when we had free time before Glenn, it was so much easier. Now it's harder to decorate because we don't have time and energy.
We still do it. And we go big.
We go pretty big. Are you that house on the block? I wouldn't say we're that house.
We're of those houses. What? Okay, so.
We're of those houses. Yeah.
We drive around a lot of houses in Altadena do it? And some of them, like, they'll let people into their houses and they do a haunted house. They go all out.
Yes. Well, there are.
I mean, this is something that blew my mind because I grew up in, you know, suburb of Boston. And I think a fairly normal street and people would put out Christmas decorations or Halloween decorations.
And then much later in my life, but nothing that crazy, literally just a string of lights here and there. My brother Neil was the one that really went for it.
He found in a junkyard, a giant light up Santa. And without my parents' permission, he lit it up and hung it on the front of our house.
My parents were very like tasteful people and they were freaked out. And he was like, you know, and I think it also, it ran on some, you know, now, now, or even then outlawed gas.
It was from like the twenties. I think real flames came out of the Santa.
It was just, and it shot asbestos and viruses around. I think it polio, it had polio and It carried candy canes made of polio.
Anyway, the point being that I then got out to L.A. after not seeing much.
And there are these streets here in L.A. Set designers live there.
Affluent people that make movie sets. And they'll spend months and they'll bring in union crews.
And you'll see this insanity. Yeah.
And you can't believe it. I know.
And I think, oh, we just plugged in some candles. I like people who decorate their house for holidays they shouldn't decorate for.
What do you mean? Like, why isn't there like a big Valentine's Day thing outside your house? Or a big St. Patrick's Day thing? Or like, you know.
Well, some people go I don't know. Some people go big on St.
Patrick's Day. As an Irish person, I don't like St.
Patrick's Day. I think it's, I'm just you know, I'm self-loathing Irish.
So when a bunch of Irish people run around hitting each over the head with green beer and saying Saints Begoris, I'm not having it. And they're always like one 15th Irish.
So, you know, when someone from the Czech Republic is saying, you know, I'm not having it. Did you ever wear a shirt that said, kiss me, I'm Irish? Ever in your life? No.
Ever in your life? No. Did you ever wear a shirt that just said, please kiss me? Yeah.
Well into my late 30s. Okay.
Please hold me, I think it said. Even sadder.
Please affirm my masculinity. I had a shirt that I wore for 35 years that was, oh, to feel a woman's touch.
But oh, apostrophe? Oh, yeah. Oh, apostrophe.
Oh, to feel a woman's touch. By by the way that's going to be a new seller for our merch oh to feel a woman's touch conan oh to feel a woman's touch um no i think a lot of young people wear that shirt i love the holidays but uh enough well first of all you and your wife both worked at at disney back in the day what's that got to do with What I'm saying is...
Dorks. Well, first of all, you and your wife both worked at Disney back in the day.

What's that got to do with it?

What I'm saying is- Storks.

No, no, no.

Not at all.

That's a big corporation,

which I'm sure advertises with us in some way.

My point is this.

You go to Disney all the time.

Yeah.

No, my thing is that you guys come from the world of,

yay, let's put on some costumes. Hello.
Time out. Maybe she does.
She was a princess. She was.
She was a Disney princess. I was very cynical about working there.
I did not like working. Oh, you worked at Disney, but you were in the resistance.
I was the cool guy. You're like the French waiter when the Nazis occupied who brought the soup out a little slowly.
Here you go, you German generals. Here's your soup.
It's Visi-Swas, but I warmed it a little bit. Take that.
You Nazis. Wow, you showed them.
I worked for Disney, but I was in the resistance. How many wigs do you have? Be honest.
In your house. I don't have any wigs.
You're lying. You must have like, oh, we're goofy.
We got wigs. No, that's the thing.
He does look like a guy who has a bunch of wigs. I know.
Certainly you're the person with all the wigs. Now, hey, when I wear a wig, it's to pass a bad check.
Okay? When I wear a wig, it's not to have fun. It's to pass the check that doesn't have my name on it.
That's right. I'm Mrs.
O'Herlihy. Now give me the feckin' money.
I'm a Croatian man. Anyway.
You have a wig bin. I don't.
You have a wig. You have a thing.
We got rid of our wigs. That's right.
Sona, in fairness to him, one week ago, they threw out the wig bin. So you had no right accusing him.
Anyway, I miss it. I miss it.
I miss my kids. I miss, I miss, I don't know.
I miss that part of life. So you should enjoy it now.
I guess. It's fun to go out and buy the spiderwebs.
Or the other way to do it is just don't clean during the year.

Get the real spiderwebs.

You know what I'm saying?

In real time.

No one's doing anything.

None of us are reacting.

Did you want us to giggle?

No.

Did you want to giggle?

No, I just thought it'd be.

Did you want something?

I really thought we had something there. I think we got a segment except it's an intro oh fuck that's right yeah so what were we saying we had something really funny oh we're not going to cut out that part where you didn't get your giggle that's you didn't get your giggle any who's i love the holidays and i say that d-a-z-e there's a funny little something for you um my guest today is a New York Times bestselling author of books such as Outliers, The Tipping Point and Blink.
He also hosts the popular podcast Revisionist History and his latest book Revenge of the Tipping Point is out now. I'm thrilled he's here with us today.
Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome.
Why do you have mixed feelings about being my friend? I hope you take this in the right spirit. Okay.
I walk in and you come and say hello to me. And I see the famous hair.
You, for your entire career, have been the king of the flamboyant hair club. You've been all, and I'm someone who has flamboyant hair yes all of us have looked towards you thank you as a kind of leader in the flamboyant hair thank you and i look and i look and it's not that flamboyant today no and i felt a little let down i was like here i was to get a kind of dose a kind of feeling that i'm on the right track that when i I let the whole fro thing go crazy, there's someone else out there doing it from the Irish perspective.
Yeah, I have an Irish fro. You do.
That's what it's called. But those famous, there's just, it's just kind of.
I'll tell you exactly what's going on. What's going on? My, and again, this could be a book for you, Malcolm Gladwell, this could be a book, but unintended consequences.
You write about all these kinds of things. What's really happening behind a phenomenon that we all take for granted? What's really happening? My hair is very susceptible to the weather and there needs to be some moisture in the air.
And I'm really not kidding. My hair is a barometer.
So when I'm in places like Seattle, Boston, where I'm from, when there's some humidity in the air, my hair is absolutely fantastic. It's on fire.
And it's big and springy and it shoots out. So moisture in the air is the Viagra for my pompadour.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
But I'm trying to use a medical terminology. Are you insinuating that you have thousands upon thousands of tiny little erections growing out of your head? You have to say little, but sure.
But what I'm saying is today, it's been very dry. It's been very dry.
And I'm noticing lately, I get up in the morning and my hands are like scales and my hair is just collapsed onto my head. And I could have done artificial things to pump up my hair this morning, but I didn't want to do that.
What artificial things? What do you mean? Curious chemicals and bombs. But I didn't want tocolm i i i so i didn't want to be fake with

you so i come in and i could see your face by disappointment since you said shit i'm unhappy out loud i didn't know i should say i'm my feelings of disappointment are they're moderate I'm not.

Wow, for me, that's pretty good.

Yeah, no, it's just a little.

I'll take that.

It's just, little take that it's just i came all pumped up yeah because like i said you know in every generation has a kind of flamboyant hair leader einstein in his day thank you uh angela davis in the 60s yeah right we can go down. There's always someone, those of us who are trying to do something

with our hair look towards.

I took a stand.

My hair has never been the popular hairstyle.

It basically is the Bob's big boy.

It's a combination of Elvis.

It's the star of Hawaii Five-0, Steve McGarrett.

Yes, a little Steve McGarrett.

There was a lot of influences to my hair. It's got some rockabilly to it.
And I let you down and I apologize. And you're going to really admire, this is a professional level segue, you did not let me down because you've written another fantastic book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, where you revisit- You're really anxious to change the subject from your hair, aren't you? Well, because it's coming from a place of disappointment.
And we're going to talk about the revenge of the tipping point in just a second, but I wanted to start with something else that I just happened to know about your own life, which is that you're now in the world of being a parent. I am.
And what fascinates me is that I'm obviously very impressed and intrigued by the way your brain works. And to be honest, somewhat intimidated.
And then I come in today thinking, that's one area where I've got 21 year head start on Malcolm Gladwell. I do.
What's that? You do, no. I do.
And I feel like, yes! And not only you guys as well, we can kick this guy around. Yeah.
With our knowledge of parenthood. Yeah, we're better.
Yeah. Did I know? Sona, you took it too far.
Oh, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm the newbie.
I'm the newbie. No, no, you're such an original thinker.
But before we even get into the book, part of me wanted to say, hey, what's your take on parenthood? Because I bet it's fairly original and unique. No, no, no.
In fact, the exact opposite. And the thing I realized really early was that every observation I had about my children, every other parent in the history of parenting had already had about their children.
So my entire life, I had been burdened by the obligation of originality. The burden has now been lifted.
And as a parent, I am free. I am free to say the most banal thing about my kids.
And everyone's like, oh, yeah, that no one has ever, ever said when I've because I've turned into the person I once despised. All I do is show people pictures.
Yeah. Nonstopstop, non-stop.
By the way, in fact. Oh, let me see.
There they are. Oh my God, beautiful.
Look. Adorable.
Oh my God. Adorable.
Oh, they're so cute. Very, very cute.
I could go on. I could sidetrack this whole thing.
No, no one has ever said when I make my observations, no. They always say, yeah, that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, it's funny, I bet, oh, here's Malcolm Gladwell.
Let's ask him about being a parent. You know, we're gonna get this.
And then you say, it makes you really tired. And people are like, what? What? This from Malcolm Gladwell? It can be challenging at times.
It's rewarding, but also- None of those things, none of those things. But I do like, it's the secret club.
You know, before you have kids, you're not a member of the club. And then you join the club and it's like, it's like, did you get a whole new lease on life? I had one thing that I'm, maybe I've said it to you guys, to Matt and Sona, but I try very hard not to tell first time expecting parents any kind of, all right, let me tell you, sit, have a seat.
Yeah. And let me spin some wisdom for you.
I always try and tell them, it's like trying to explain to someone who's never been immersed in water what that feels like it is such a profound change in your life that you just need to go through it and then you're going to look at me and nod yeah but to try and sit and explain the only way for someone to understand what it's like to be in a body of water is to jump in a body of water. And until you've done that, the greatest writers in the world cannot explain to you what that feels like.
Yeah. And so you just have to go through it.
The only advice I ever give is lots of video because you're, when they're 10, 15, 20 years from now, you are going to look at all of it over and over and over again. Oh, video that I'm taking of them.
I thought you meant video that I'm showing them. Lots of screen time.
Just set them in front of an iPad. I thought you were just saying.
Oh, no. You got it exactly.
Specifically, VHS video. I think it should be all movies from the 80s and late 70s.
Lots of murder. Lots of murder.
And just they should be, no. It'd be funny if that was my advice.
You know what I mean? Lots of screen time and high fructose corn syrup. One season of Revisionist History, we did a, we wrote the ending to The Little Mermaid over the course of four episodes, which is possibly three episodes too many, but it was very fun.
Because you know, and it's all wrong, the ending, right? Yes. And I had run across this.
All wrong because. Well, I'll explain to you.
Thank you. Conan.
Do you have daughters, by the way? I have a daughter and a son. Oh, so only two.
That's unusual for someone. What? Oh, yes.
Oh, and guess what? Guess what? They're both alcoholics. And they dress like leprechauns, Gladwell.
Wow. Guess what? You know what? A little bias there.
I guess what? Can you resist?

No, no, you can't resist.

O'Brien is the last name.

You can't resist.

Also, the Irish are the one people where you can say whatever you want

and no one gets upset.

Not even, particularly the Irish.

On that point, first of all,

on Irish bias, which is always confirmed,

I would have had more kids. And after our second child, my wife said, you're never to touch me again.
Which I've held onto that. But, and the second one, this is a true story.
I did it at a benefit the other night. I performed at a benefit for a really good cause.
And just before I went up, some guy who was at the benefit in the crowd came up to me.

I want to say he was like late thirties, had a little bit of a fratty vibe to him, maybe 40. And he's like, hey man, so when you go up to perform, do you usually have a couple of hits? Because he was holding a drink.
And I went, no, I don't do that. And he went, no, come on, but you probably have at least a drink.
And I went, no. And he went, but you're Irish.
and he looked really like

I don't understand

you know

how an Irish person

cannot be drinking you probably have at least a drink. And I went, no.
And he went, but you're Irish. And he looked really like,

I don't understand, you know,

how an Irish person cannot be drinking.

It was just fascinating to me

that in this age of sensitivity,

he's like, nope.

And I was like, no, okay.

You guys are, you're the last.

We're the last.

We can sort of open season.

Yes, you can.

No, it's fine.

Yes, you can.

And go for it.

No, no.

But so.

Didn't mean to offend you. No, no, no.
I find it, again, you can't offend the Irish. Yes, every thought I ever had as a parent has already been said, probably by the ancient Greeks.
Yeah. No, no, it's great.
No, I asked only because you must have seen The Little Mermaid, if you have a daughter. And I had read this Law Review article by this professor who was watching The Little Mermaid.
She was a contract law professor with her kids, and she got outraged at the way The Little Mermaid story portrays contract law. Because, of course, the plot twist in The Little Mermaid is that The Little Mermaid enters into a contract with Ursula that she will give up her soul unless she gets the hand.
There's no way that contract will be upheld by a court of law. And this law professor got very angry that Disney was deliberately perpetrating this kind of injustice on contract law.
And so she wrote— She has no issue with there being no such thing as mermaids. No, no, no.
Also, she points out the mermaid is underage. You cannot...
An underage person can't... So there was so many red flags.
So many red flags. So she writes this very angry law review.
And I remember I was reading it... Remind me never to watch a movie with this person.
I know. No, no.
And I was like... I had one thought and only one thought on me.
and that was, this woman is the greatest genius. And so I basically ran back to the office and called her up, and it turns out she was hilarious.
And she inspired me. So then I, turns out there's multiple problems with Little Mermaid.
I don't mean to get into it. And so I, did you know the screenwriter actress, Britt Marling, a friend of mine, I said, Britt, I have this problem with Little Mermaid.
She said, so do I. And so she rewrote.
I got her on the case. And then we performed it.
I got Jodie Foster and Glenn Close to play key roles. Oh, my God.
And what I really wanted, the final piece was I wanted Disney to sue us. Because I heard they're famously litigious.igious and I thought this is the greatest marketing opportunity in the history of my podcast.
My podcast is not as big as yours. I need to have these kinds of...
And so I did everything in my power to bring this to the attention of the attorneys at Disney. Nothing.
To this day. Basically, I accused them of everything under the sun.
I ripped off their content. I did everything you're supposed to do to get a lawsuit.
Yeah. No lawsuit.
That's disappointing. It is.
I think there's nothing sadder than not being sued by Disney. I know.
It was like when they, remember they were banning books again in like Florida. Right.
And the first thing I did was like, am I on the list? Am I on the list? Oh, please. Oh, please, please, please.
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New members only within 14 days. you know the the story that got me writing this book is I wanted to say something about the opioid crisis, which I think is kind of the most under-discussed thing going on in our society right now.
And I was very, I wanted to understand how it was that OxyContin makes this enormous, I mean, it's not the first painkiller. It's not the first opioid painkiller.
It's not the first addictive painkiller. Yet it's the one that sets in motion this epidemic that now, you know, kills over 100,000 Americans every year, which is such an astonishing number.
I don't, I can't even, I don't understand how we even wrap our minds around how many Americans die every year of overdoses, but understanding that there was this very, very deliberate Machiavellian

brilliance. I can't even, I don't understand how we even wrap our minds around how many Americans die every year of overdoses.
But understanding that there was this very, very deliberate Machiavellian, brilliant, but evil strategy they followed, which was an epidemic strategy, which was all about understanding that they did not need to convince the majority of doctors to prescribe opioids to start an epidemic. They only needed, in fact, they end up, the statistic I was at the core of this was, they ended up, we ended up with a situation at the end of OxyContin's life where 1% of American doctors were prescribing 50% of the OxyContin.
Yes. And that's the whole game.
They understood, we don't even have to worry about, we can basically ignore 99% of doctors. Our concern is with the 1%.
A couple thousand doctors in the whole country will be sufficient to get this thing rolling because those guys at the fringes will prescribe so many prescriptions of OxyContin. That's all we need.
And so they take a sales apparatus, which typically if you're a drug company, you build a sales apparatus to reach the broad middle of doctors. And they just deployed it towards these kind of like whack job doctors who were way out of the norm in small town Tennessee and visited them hundreds of times.
Wined and dined them. Wined and dined them and convinced them to write thousands of prescriptions for OxyContin.
That is distillation of an epidemic strategy yeah it's not the law of the few it's the law of the very very few in an analogous situation you talk about how they did a covid study involving hundreds of people and you know thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people got sick and it was from two people yeah in the study it was two of them yeah spread it yeah in the same and it's analogous it's in the same way that with with oxycontin they had you describe the tragedy of it is that the vast majority of doctors are responsible and there are laws and mechanisms in place to keep something like this happening you describe how doctors there was a a rule put in place that if you write someone a prescription for a drug this powerful an opioid it's on a triplicate form so there's three copies and because of that it keeps everyone in line there's three copies of it there's a real record a lot of dissemination of what I'm doing. Okay.
So everyone is going to be good. But then these drug companies found out there are some places where that law doesn't apply.
Yeah. And that's where they feasted on.
And that's where they feasted. And then you talk about what's really disturbing is reading the testimony later on where people are being asked members of

the family the sackler sackler family yeah they're being asked do you feel any kind of responsibility and it's all passive language well the kind of famous nixon quote is mistakes were made yeah yeah um about watergate well mistakes were made none of them you know none of them went to jail if you think about it like

you know Sam Bankman Freed

who you know I guess

committed mistakes were made none of them you know none of them went to jail yeah if you think about it like you know sam bankman freed who you know i guess uh committed a fraud and went you know although none of the very few of the people who he apparently defrauded actually lost money he's in jail for how many years eight years so you can right you can mislead rich people and you're in jail for eight years but you can kill a couple hundred thousand americans and you're fine yeah i find that very curious i don't really understand how i mean i realized it was a legal settlement and blah blah blah and blah blah blah but still it's kind of shocking that it is shocking and they and then you're talking about when they testified before congress they talked as if this whole epidemic had been started by someone else it It wasn't even, or this company, Purdue Pharma, that their family had started and created and run for two generations was a kind of third party off by the side that they had no connection to. I mean, I just find the whole, everything about the opioid crisis is astonishing to me.
I remember it being shocked. Very recently, one of my children came home from school someone came to their school and told them showed them how to use narcan that's how prevalent this is that the way we were shown a fire exit yeah and had a fire alarm practice now kids are being shown how to you.
Now kids are being shown how to, you know, young adults are being shown how to use Narcan because, and thank God they are because that's saving a lot of lives. But that's where we are now.
Yeah. It's just standard training for kids.
Yeah. One more welcome to the world of parenting.
One more thing I have to worry about. Well, it's, I mean, something I never thought about, obviously, when I was growing up and didn't have to worry about.
And there's so many things that kids have to worry about today. It does make me profoundly sad that even fairly innocuous things that a kid may experiment with can have been tampered with.
Yeah. And kill them.
So, you know, that's the world we're in. And I'm going to end the podcast right there.
Oh, no! Conan, you're just bringing us down. I know.
What happened to your famous joie dere? Guess what happened? Guess what happened?

You came in and you shit on my hair.

Is your mood contingent on your hair?

Yes!

Yes!

And now I'm spiraling.

My hair is flat against my big Irish skull,

which is loaded with alcohol.

Jameson's.

Jameson's.

And I'm primed for a fight. But you know what, there's so much, it's really funny, like there's, on an upbeat note, because there's so many fun puzzles in this book and intriguing things.
There's one thing that you brought up in the book, and I'm jumping around here because I don't know a better way to discuss it, but you talk about how we all know World War II ends, 1945. There's the revelation, Nuremberg trials about concentration camps.
Sorry, upbeat note? You'll see. We're getting there.
We're getting there. All right.
This does not end well. If I have if i if i have a sense no no no this was i not not that it's upbeat but it was fascinating to me that the holocaust was very little discussed in the late 40s the 1950s the 60s through the end of the 70s through the end of the 70s and then there's was it a movie of it's a television movie four-part miniseries.
So if you go back and you look at, when I got interested in this, I got all the textbooks you would read in freshman year European history in the 60s and the 70s. And if you read them, and you're reading, they got like four chapters on the Second World War.
You read all four chapters, and you're looking for when they discuss the Holocaust. And you look and and you look and you look and there's nothing there there's like two sentences there's like and then the germans created camps where they put displaced persons gypsies communists and jews period and then they go on to something else you're like wait how is this these are serious textbooks and then you look you can keep going and there's actually been a whole scholarship about how they weren't denying the Holocaust.
They just weren't mentioning it. It wasn't discussed.
It just wasn't. There's only one Holocaust museum in this country prior to the 1980s, and that's actually here in LA.
And that was one that was created almost by accident. I tell that story in the book.
A bunch of survivors are at Hollywood High learning English together, and they want a place to put their stuff, the stuff they can't bear to keep in their house, right? The uniform from Auschwitz or whatever. And then what happens? So if you look at, like, how often is the word Holocaust used in books, magazine articles, newspapers up until 1979? And the answer is it's almost never used used then there's a four-part miniseries on nbc starring meryl streep and james woods called holocaust which half the country it has a 50 share half the country tunes in to watch it and boom after that that's when we get all the holocaust museum that that blew my mind that this was not discussed and that this one TV series that I frankly don't remember watching changed everything.
Completely changed the dialogue. I remember the same thing happening with, I mean, this is crazy, but there was in the 80s, there was the day after.
Yes. Yes, that's it.
The day after about nuclear war. And there's footage of Ron and Nancy Reagan, President Reagan and Mrs.
Reagan watching it. And they're gobsmacked.
This is the guy who has the nuclear football is saying, what? This would be bad. And so the net cut to him meeting with Gorbachev, you know, at Reykjavik and saying,

well, we have to make sure this never, you know,

and be based on a TV movie that got maybe,

what if that hadn't been greenlit?

I mean, it's, these things turn on these incredibly-

Did Judgment of Nuremberg not land with people?

No, you, I mean, there are these little mentions here.

There's Diary of Anne Frank, obviously,

which is on Broadway and also a movie. But even that, remember, that's really about Anne Frank's story in Holland.
It's not really about what's going on in the camps in Central Europe. um also just a bit judgment nuremberg is not all it does not focus on the holocaust

that it do you know what i mean it it in a way that you would expect it today it's very much yeah it's it's very much about the the prosecution of evil and the the these these bad bad nazis um but it's discussed and there's a famous scene i think with judy garland but it's and they show footage remember they show it in the courtroom they show like but it's not it's discussed, and there's a famous scene, I think, with Judy Garland, but it's- And they show footage. Remember, they show it in the courtroom.
Yeah. They show like- But it's not highlighted that way.
Yeah. The average American, when they finally run that miniseries, most Americans had, if they were dimly aware that there had been, the term that was used back then was that there had been atrocities, yeah but the idea that there was this kind of systematic destruction of european jury at the scale that it was and with and what that meant on a kind of it was not was sort of absent from discussion it's it's kind of um and then they take the the miniseries then gets resold uh to television.
And the same thing happens only times 10, because the Germans had just not mentioned the Holocaust at all. And all of these Germans discover for the first time what their country did.
And there's a whole literature about what happened when the Germans finally watched this NBC. I mean, the country was in an uproar.
I mean, you cannot imagine. There's almost no analogous media event to what happened when the Germans watched this.
It was on late night cable, and the whole country tunes in. Yeah.
And it just kind of, there was, you know, all the major newspapers ran these huge sections discussing what had happened, and people were like, wait. And that's when now you have in Germany a real heightened awareness of their responsibility for the Holocaust.
It's moving and it's very impressive, too, that when you go to Berlin, they've not only acknowledged it, but there's a sense that they're going to great lengths to make sure that everyone is aware. And I mean, all the plaques outside of homes that say these people were taken from this home and they were taken to this camp and they were murdered.
And it's just, there are a lot of countries in the world. I don't know if there's any such thing as an innocent country, but many countries have things to own up to and don't.
And it's impressive how much Germany has. The whole thing goes to this question of that there can be, I mean, what interested me was that there can be a moment when public opinion or acknowledgement or knowledge of an event can kind of shift overnight.

I mean, that was what attracted me to that story. Well, there is a lighter version of this, which has really got me thinking.
You talk about will and grace. Oh, yeah, yeah.
There were these very perceived rules about if you're going to talk about, let's say you're going to talk about homosexuality or gay couples on a television, here are the rules. And there was this way in which that has to be done responsibly.
And Will and Grace didn't follow any of those rules. Yeah, so this is this work of, I've ran across this really wonderful TV scholar named Bonnie Dow, who does this analysis.

First, she starts with the way that Hollywood talked about women's issues.

So remember that wave of kind of feminist shows

starting in the 70s, Mary Tyler Moore's show.

Rhoda.

Rhoda.

Yeah, Cagney and Lacey.

Yes, I think that's part of that.

And she points out that you would think watching those

that those were shows that were kind of pro-women's liberation or whatever, feminist. But they follow a very implicit set of rules about how a woman is allowed to proceed.
She says that in every case, the woman was only allowed to succeed if she was succeeding in a man's world. And all of those heroes were childless and not in a relationship.
So the, the, the real message of that, of those shows were, yes, you can, you can get ahead if you're a woman, but only if you give up any chance of having a family. Right.
There's no domesticity. There's no domesticity.
So it's like, so it's not really, are those shows pro-feminist? Or when you watch them, do you think, oh, wow, that's the price I have to pay if I want to participate? Then she says there's a similar set of rules about the way Hollywood dealt with gay topics. And the rule was homosexuality was always a problem to be solved.
In other words, the plot surrounding the gay person had to turn on the fact that everyone else in that person's life

was trying to fix all of the crisis that had been caused by that this person's sexuality the gay character was only ever seen in isolation so they didn't have a community they didn't have they weren't in a relationship they didn't have they were just off by themselves it was like the typical one would be you find out your 16-year-old son is gay, right?

And so the whole family is left to deal

with this intense problem.

Another rule was no sex.

So you can't ever see what this thing is about.

It's always an abstraction.

And the, oh, and then the last one was

that the gay character cannot be the center of the narrative. They have to be peripheral to the narrative.
Narrative is about it. So, you know, you add these up and you get, you could watch a made-for-team movie that might be on its face, might be quite sensitive and sympathetic to the gay character.
But all all these rules are telling the audience that this guy's off in the margins. He's on the fringes.
He's incapable of participating fully in modern life, right? So, and there's a wonderful book, this film scholar does a book where he looks at every single film from 1940 to 1975 that had, or 1980 that had a gay character, and he just shows every single one of them meets a bad end. They either are killed, commit suicide, end up in prison, or every single one.
There's like 48 characters, and every one of them. And what happens with Will and Grace is that Will and Grace comes along and breaks every one of those rules.
So Will's gayness is not a problem to be solved. But never.
It's never perceived to be a problem. He's never, he's not seen in isolation.
He's also, it's Will and Grace, so he's number one on McCall's sheet. He's not peripheral.
He's not peripheral. He has Jack, and he has boyfriends.
He's part of a community. You know, go on and on and on.
He's the center of the show. He's not a, he's not.
And the effect of that. So if you're someone who's watched TV your whole life, and all you've seen is gay characters in this very specific context where there's something deeply problematic about them.
And all of a sudden you're exposed to a show where there's a gay character and there's nothing. I mean, he has problems, but they're not problems related to his sexuality.
He's just a neurotic, just another neurotic He's like the rest of us. He's got problems we all have.
Living in an apartment in New York which is what all sitcoms were about in those years. Right.
Right. There's something with that show that kind of that is a revolutionary show.
It completely rewrites the rules. I think, you know, it's always a fun experiment to say what are the five most important television shows of the last 50 years.
I think Will and Grace is like, I would put it, I don't know, second, third. I think it's, I don't think it's, I think it's ahead of Archie Bunker.
I think it's, you know, they always say 60 minutes is one. And like.
I usually get three. I'm usually three.
Your show? Late Night with Conan O'Brien is usually three. Are we in the real world or in my reality? Yeah.
Because I like my reality. And in my reality, I think Mermaid is perfect.
I should not have laughed so heartily at your suggestion. No, Conan, I'm sure.
I don't know what you find so funny. I'm always like three or four, but I know what you're saying.
I think you're top ten. Yeah, thank you.
Can I make a peripheral point about late night and the decline, what late night is meant? Oh, sure. So for several generations, this is not related to my book, all of America, not all of America, a huge chunk of America every night watches some version of either Jimmy, Johnny Carson, or someone else interview somebody, engage in a conversation with somebody.
And it's highly entertaining, but also what they're seeing is a masterful interviewer interview someone, right? So you're getting, it's kind of like interviewing class conducted on a national basis for everyone in America. That goes away.
And I have become convinced that no one knows how to interview anyone anymore. Or even have, really what Johnny Carson is having is conversations, right? Yeah.
Really fun conversations. I think the art of conversation has declined at the same time as the decline of late night.
I don't think people, you need a model. No one is a model anymore.
They're not, it's like, you're being incredibly rude right now. I'm interviewing you and you said, and you said, no one knows how to interview anymore.
And I would like you to have a big fuck yourself sandwich. Can you, do we have a fuck yourself sandwich? That's not a good conversation.
With a little pastrami on it. That's a bad conversation.
Me make good talk. Me make good talk, not bad talk.
No, you're part of, you grew up on these people, right? You know what I'm talking about. Yes.
You grew up on, and various versions of that. All of the different late night hosts offered you a different version of how to do it, right? And when that goes away as a model, who's left? Well well there's a lot of things i could say about it yeah but i i do think um that the architecture of a late night show um for a long time was kill time meaning when the the form comes along because in the late 40s early 50s someone at NBC realizes we just go off the air at 11 o'clock at night why do we do that yeah it's like a a family that discovers we've got an attic why don't we go up there finish the attic and suddenly we've got three more bedrooms so the early late night shows are people killing time.
And that's what they are for a long time is killing time. And a lot of good conversation comes out of killing time.
Comes out of killing time. What happens is there's a lot of money in it.
Then there's more competition and television and media in general speeds up. And there's more and more pressure on them.
And then suddenly it's, well, you can't sit and have a long conversation. There needs to be a lot of energy.
There needs to be a lot of, it has to be frenetic, the pace of it. And if you look, if someone ever does a study on late night television, go back and watch Carson and watch early Letterman.
Even the, you know, earlier versions of my show or early episodes in the early 90s, there is a slower pace. I mean, to some extent, podcasts such as this have filled that void because we're slowing down, right? We are.
We're choosing- We're basically killing time right now, Conan. I mean- Oh, we are killing time.
We are. I mean...
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Excludes restaurants. I've noticed that you, there's a chapter of this book that you have not mentioned at all.

Which is?

For reasons that I think will become obvious.

Okay.

It's the chapter where I attack Harvard University.

You're on the water.

I'm all in favor of attacking Harvard University.

There is an extended assault.

You know that this is a-

I wasn't hiding from that chapter.

There's so much to talk about, but you talk about how it starts with Harvard has a women's rugby team. Yeah.
And you basically say, why? Why? And you go ahead. You take it.
By the way, I was on the women's rugby team. I got a scholar.
That's how I got my scholarship. You should, first of all, I should say parenthetically that no one spends more time attacking the Ivy League than me it's my that's why God put me on this earth I feel that's my I've done it so many times on my podcast that whenever I come up with my new attack which I do every year everyone in the room just rolls their eyes that's we could do a whole put Malcolm on the couch why is he he so obsessed with him? But put that aside, the particular argument here is based on, I'm trying to figure out, Harvard University, where you attended, I can't hide from that anymore.
You can't hide from that anymore. 1981 to 85.
Yeah. They plays more Division I sports than any other college in the country.
No one else is even close. People don't realize this.
You always think the big sports school is like Clemson or something. No, no, no.
It's Harvard. They have more student athletes than anyone else.
And not only that, they give a massive admissions preference to their recruited athletes. So the easiest way to get into Harvard is not to be the best student in your class.
It's to be the best athlete in your class. But also very specific athletic endeavors.
So the sports they really, really, really, really care about are, and let's see whether you can detect some kind of common denominator, rowing, fencing, sailing, rugby, tennis, It's country club sports, right? So I do a whole chapter on why would they bend over backwards to participate in all of these country club sports? And not only that, to give massive, basically to do an affirmative action program for the athletes in the sports. And the answer is because a sport like tennis, to be a recruited tennis player, you have to play Division I tennis.
To play Division I tennis, your parents have to be willing to spend 50 to 100 grand a year. It's enormously expensive.
So when I say I'm setting aside four admission slots every year for tennis players, what I'm really saying is I'm setting aside four admission slots for the children of people who have enough money to spend $100,000 on their kids' groundstrokes. So it's a way of making sure that enough rich kids attend your school.
It's really obvious. And this drives me crazy because I'm someone who believes very strongly in the idea of a meritocracy.
And I think it's one of the most beautiful things about this country. And the idea that the reigning symbol of meritocracy in this country is essentially going out of its way to reward kids who play rich kid sports.
Like sailing, think of an admissions preference for kids who are good at sailing. But it's just, it's ridiculous.
Well, maybe they're going to grow up to be fishermen, lobstermen, youermen you know I mean they're gonna probably go to sea and explore the oceans I mean I think most of those kids are gonna end up right hauling crab yeah that's right yeah that's why they're doing it yeah I think so well there's another okay this brings up another point which is that because when I read that, I thought, shit, I should have done some fencing. I worked way too hard in high school.
That would have been much easier. Yeah, I should have been a champion beekeeper.
But the bigger point is that people can eventually game anything. That's the way I feel about it, is that, because the other point is okay let's let's set all the the rich kids who are playing those sports aside and say okay we really want it to be a meritocracy so we're going to have it be about the sat people can game that because parents hire sat tutors there's billions of dollars spent a year making sure that kids are very familiar with that test.
I think it still does test people who are off the charts. But what I'm saying is that no matter what you do, I mean, we've seen this on Wall Street a million times, you set up these rules, someone will find a small crack.
Someone will say, hey, wait a minute. No one ever said anything about mortgage-backed securities.
Bang. Yeah.
Everybody's doing it. And then the whole system collapses.
And we wonder, wait a minute. Why did that guy who works on a garbage truck own nine properties? You know, what is going on? I once, you know, speaking of the SIT, I once challenged my assistant to the LSAT.
I thought it was really fun. I got a tutor.
I went through that whole process. And the hilarious thing, of course, about the tutor was the first thing he said, I had to learn to, quote, process without understanding.
What? Meaning, which I thought was hilarious because it's a test designed to measure your aptitude for being a lawyer. And the test for being a lawyer can only be, you can only do well if you learn how to process without understanding.
If my lawyer came to me and said I processed your case without understanding it, I think I'd be a little bit alarmed. But so that it was like, it sounds like a good lawyer though.
And I have a lot to to say about the little mermaid. That's not contract law.
No, but it does. I was part.
I never, cause you know, in Canada, we don't have, I'm Canadian. We don't have standardized tests.
I knew nothing about this. I moved to America after college and I hear people talk about the SAT and it sounds like some kind of strange, holy right, you know, and I was so kind of curious that at a certain point in my life, I decided I had to do it.
And I went. I sat in that big room with hundreds of other people.
I was the only person over the age of like 25. And I ended up tying my assistant.
Oh, okay. Which I thought was good.
The money was on her because she's 24. And the general consensus around the office is I didn't stand a chance because I've obviously lost so many brain cells.

What was your score? I don't remember. It was not impressive.
Basically, I was headed for a mediocre law school, which that's fine. Someone's got to be a mediocre law school.
Well, here's the other thing, too. I mean, I've said this to everybody I've ever encountered in this business is that I have had the privilege of working with so many talented, amazing, funny people who are great at what they do.
And often I don't know where they went to college because the amount of pressure we put on that is insane. Yeah.
And you talk a lot about resilience and people who are not from a monoculture, but people who are forced to be resilient and the great benefits that that has. And I don't know, I just, I'm always- I thought you were going to tell us your SAT score.
I thought that's where you were headed. I intentionally forgot my SAT score.
I intentionally, if you could, I selected which brain cells I could forget, and I forgot those. No, I had that chapter, another chapter of the book, where I read and I ran across a bunch of articles by these two sociologists, Anna Muller and Seth Arbiton, and they were talking about a town they would only call Poplar Grove and they had been working there studying it for years and it was they described it and I later figured out what they what town it was and went there for myself and confirmed it it's the perfect it literally is the perfect community if you went there you would say it on the water, incredibly tight-knit.
It's like Gilmore Girls or something. Well, I'm sorry.
Lights in the trees at night and a... I did not expect you to say Gilmore Girls.
My neuron misfired and you laughed. Those are some rich literary illusions that you're working with, Conan.
My favorite Bronte novel is Gilmore Girls. No, no.
So, Poplar Grove, yes. You're talking about how it's amazing.
High school best in the state. Yeah.
You know, every amenity under the sun. And they had had a suicide epidemic at the high school that had gone on way, way, way, way longer was incredibly heartbreaking and these two muller and arbutton so do all this analysis and their conclusion is that one of the big problems with the town the reason this has happened is that it was a high school that only had one culture so it you know it i'm sure your high schools too my high school like a normal high school school, it had like 10 different cliques you could join, you know, the jocks and the nerds and the whatever.
And the point of that is it's powerfully protective that any child coming into that high school, no matter how dysfunctional they may feel, can find a home. There was a place you could go if you were, you know, we called them stoners.
But in my high school school which is rural canada that meant you smoked cigarettes yeah quite quaint yeah but um if you wanted to be a quote-unquote stoner and smoke marble lights there was a place for you right how'd you make it out of there yeah no no yeah exactly i um the um my high school was so tame in retrospect i don's just, it seems like a kind of fantasy that it even existed. Well, I was, yeah, in the same way, I went to a very large public high school.
There were kids who weren't gonna go to college. You know what I mean? Their dads worked for the town.
There were kids whose parents were, you know, professionals who wanted to go to an Ivy League school. There was just this large swath of almost every kind of kid you could imagine.
There was something called school within a school where there are very artistic and kids that could have set their own schedule. And then there was a large immigrant population.
This was the late 70s. We had some students whose parents had fled Iran.
We had students who were from China. And so it was great in that it sounds like the exact opposite of this Poplar Grove.
And the thing you understand is, yeah. So imagine what Poplar Grove is, is a city, a town, and a high school where there's only one of those groups, where every child is required to conform to the super sporty, socially successful, on their way to Ivy League model.
And so if you don't fit and work in that incredibly narrow description, there's nowhere for you to go. There's only one culture.
And the epidemic they had was the result of, was the consequences of that kind of narrowness. And it made me, it's interesting because it made me realize, you know, in all of our discussions about diversity, we sometimes make diverse, achieving a diverse environment, make it seem like it's medicine, like it's the right thing to do, but it's hard.
Eat your vegetables. But in fact, in this example, diversity is what makes a community resilient.
It means that any problem that one group has isn't necessarily going to spread to other groups because they're different, right? And I just thought that was really, you know, and the idea that the parents of this town, this is the community they wanted for their kids. They moved there because it was perfect.
They are the ones who supported the notion that we should have this incredibly strong, unified set of values about what it means to be a successful student at the school. And then they were somehow baffled by the fact that everything went sideways.
And I, you know, this, as a, coming back to my new parenthood, this is what, the only observation I will make about parenting is that this confusion

between what we want and what

our children need seems to be

the principle, that's the principle

conflict of, I always catch myself

thinking, and I'll very confidently

say to Kate, my partner, I'll say

you know, I think Edie should do

this, right? And in fact what I'm saying

is, I would like to do this

and I'm using her as a kind of front to to you want a cigarette I want a cigarette come on go down get a pack but this was the worst this was the kind of the this was the biggest version of that problem that like parents are just like I there's a there's this woman I who wrote a book um a woman named linda flanagan wrote a book called taking back the game which is all about what's wrong with youth sports and she's always she was a coach for many years it's really brilliant book and she has this moment when she talks about like possible fixes and one of her fixes is that parents need to stop going to games and it's the same idea that that because what happens of course it's pleasurable for the parent to go to the game. There's no one's denying that.
But the parent is confusing what's pleasurable for them and what's pleasurable for their kids. And the question is, does your child want you there really, like, deep down? And, you know, by what we're doing when we show up for those games is we are intruding on what should be this kind of, this time for kids to play with other kids without the scrutiny of and the pressure that comes from parents watching.
Like that's the perfect, you know, example of this. And I just maybe wonder how many times do we, is this what, you know, I'm a young parent, is this what parenting turns into, this constant conflict? Look, well, you talked about this.

I think we had a guest here the other day.

I think it was Josh Brolin, and we were talking about his upbringing. And I was saying what I would always say to my wife when the kids were little was, remember, it's important that they're bored.
because I think one of the things

that's come along with super parenting

in this age is

that a child needs to be

activated and engaged and entertained at all times yeah and i swear to god i you know i'm one of six and there was uh a lot of you know i say this a lot of benign neglect meaning no one on my ass not being helicopter because my parents worked. There was a lot going on.
What number were you? A third. Oh, you're right smack on the bat.
Yeah. And so I just remembered having a lot of time with my brain and it was nightmares.
But- I was bored for the first eight years of my life. And I would complain to my mother and she would say exactly that.
She would say, it's good for you to be bored. Yeah.
And look at us here. Yeah.
Here we are. Here we are having the greatest conversation.
Well, I have to wrap this up because we've gone, you've solved it. Well, first of all, I think we've solved the engineering of humanity and you and I, if we've just put in charge can fix everything.
It's a testament to your book that I read it and it's got me thinking about 700 different things in different ways. And so, and that is the power that you seem to have is just raising these issues.
And also it's, it goes back to that concept that I was talking about earlier, which is we can all be tricked. We can all be conned.
We can all be manipulated. It's really fascinating.
The more you think about it, I think the more you build up some sort of resilience towards it. Yeah.
And a little bit of immunity where you can think, wait a minute, is this what I want? Or do I want this because this is the way everything has been engineered by somebody?

And it probably has.

I have a confession to make, which is that the entire time we've been talking, I've been – you have your notebook open.

I've been trying to read upside down.

Because I want to know, like, were your notes – when you made notes to yourself, were they different from the things?

Were you like, book's terrible?

Oh, I can read it to you right now. Oh, fuck.
Gladwell's coming. This is going to be another shit show.
Hair not up to Gladwell's standards. He's probably going to go after the Irish.
Parentheses did last time. That's right.
He seems to have a real thing. Let's hope he doesn't bring up Harvard.
I love my time on women's rugby. It was my only way in.
Why the fuck has he got such a bone to pick with my favorite sport? That's where I met Tracy. I mean, I don't know.
Hey, Tracy. Yeah.
You shouldn't do that. Why do you leave it out like that? It's distracting.
Oh, I'm sorry. Look, I've got drawings.
Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah.
I've got... 1963.
That's the year I was born. That's the year I was born.
I did a drawing of Senator Abe Rybakov. Oh, my God.
What the fuck? Why? I'm a strange man. Why? That is so fantastic.
Rybakov, the senator from New York State.

Was he New York State?

I want to say he was Connecticut.

He was the one in the 1968 convention.

Why did I draw Senator Abe Ribicoff?

Wait, Conan, we're born in the same year.

When's your birthday?

April 18th.

Okay.

I was just checking to make sure we weren't, in fact, born in the very same day. We were born in the same hospital and switched at birth.

That's why we both have crazy hair. Turns out you're the Jamaican.
Against all of us. Yes, and you're a terrible alcoholic.
Oh, Gladwell. I love talking to you.
And clearly, I mean, this could go on for seven hours, but even podcasts have sped up but I do hope you'll come back and I hope you'll come back even if there isn't a book if we can just chat I love I really enjoy it I really enjoy it and if the art of conversation is dead I don't know what this was because I really thoroughly had a great time as did did I. Thank you, Conan.
Next time I'll be nicer about the I feel. I'm going to say, I'm going to come up with something really, I'll think, spend the next couple years coming up with just the right word.
You know what? I think you nailed it the first time. Hey, thank you so much, sir.
Conan. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Conan O'Brien,

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Take it away, Jimmy.

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