Tight Values, Loose Ideas with Malcolm Gladwell [VIDEO]

Trevor, you don't know this yet. You will someday.
The, you know, the market share capture, the brain share capture of toddlers by Sesame Street is like 95%. It's insane.
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 Coco Melon and... No, no, no, no.
Oh, that's really good. They have got to strangle.
They have your kid in the head.

Yeah, it's Sesame Street.

That's a healthy headlock.

Peppa Pig and Coco Melon.

Oh, Peppa Pig is fire.

Coco Melon is like crack.

Coco Melon, I outlawed Coco Melon.

Coco Melon is dangerous.

I don't know what's happening.

I call them the Coco Fellas,

the kids that watch that stuff.

I don't know what's happening with Coco Melon.

If I have to listen to any more Coco Melon,

I'm bringing back Stop and Frisk.

That's how much it will radicalize me. This is What Now? With Trevor Noah.
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that's b-r-o-o-k-l-i-n-e-n.com and use the code trevor for 15 off your online order of a hundred dollars or more that's brooklinen.com use promo code trevor for 15 off you were telling people when we talked about you i was like do you know black people don't

like no mark of black but white people don't know yeah i'm talking about white people don't know

i'm stealth i would have back in the day would have been very i was born in the wrong century

19th 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 100 years later wait a second he was black what was he doing in congress talk about malcolm being passing yeah to white people black people see the hair they're like no no no they're like 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 23andMe and I'm 23% emo. 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.
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 ebo right yeah yeah jamaica's just nigeria right it's my it's my advanced theory so you had no you had no clue that you had any nigerian in you well i guessed okay but now you know definitive now i know what what is it? So 23% Igbo? That's a significant amount.

It's not enough for a tipping point, as we've learned from this book.

It's not enough, Malcolm.

You're like 7% short.

We can change the rules.

You're Nigerians.

We like to switch the rules.

Nigerians are 1%.

Each one of us.

Nigerians would be technically 1% or more than...

On the Jamaican front, I was at the World Championships track championships and i see shelly and fraser price right 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 yeah 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.
Yeah. 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.
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.
They'll make him a chief. Chief Gladwell.
Chief Gladwell. I'll take it.
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 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 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.
You're 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, changed 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 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 he was done.
I thought it was fantastic as a child. 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 they'll just wake up and do 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 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? I just felt like I was 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 Deep Christians.
Okay. That's interesting.
They're not changing. All of us here.
Okay. Super deep Christians.
Here we are. Three of us are gathered in his name.
Let's go. No.
But no, not changing their mind about that. Yeah.
So I'm saying that I'm used to real rigidity and rules and I won't call it dogma, orthodoxy. Right.
So it's surprising that I think it takes great humility humility but it also must be quite painful to go back and read this book that as trevor said change 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 six or 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 use 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 grow up

or you're,

you know,

in the original Tipping Point,

there's a chapter on crime,

which is just

why New York City crime fell

in the 90s.

It's an appalling chapter.

I mean, it's just appalling. 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 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 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

Thank you. 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. It's actually an incredibly interesting history.
You know, what happens is a judge stops stop and frisk in 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, 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 want to 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 use 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 to you right now i don't know how many times i've heard human beings say that you go like i look back and go like damn what was i thinking oh so i mean yeah i find it's weird and also it's so long ago like this is the this was the late 90s i'm older than you guys but but it's like have you looked at high school yearbook? Like, it's just everything about it is cringeworthy. I mean, it should be fine to look back on your 25 years in the past self and have an issue.
I would hope he would have an issue. I think it's because so much of the world that we live in currently, it's say, as a foreigner coming to America.
So many times the Constitution is referenced and the amendments are referenced. 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 gotta change the amendment. Then like, you don't change the amendment.
Then 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 what I find ironic in the whole situation is like, I agree with you.
Constitution, old document, but it's a living document, you know, 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 seem angry at you they like seem angry that malcolm gladwell would change because here's my my theory so i love changing my mind okay maybe that's why i 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 because because you're making them do work yeah so you gotta revise you have to revise your opinion of them and that seems like oh that that seems like an imposition i think that's what um as opposed to kind of, you know, it's the same way when a musician makes a kind of change in their style.
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.
It is a funny, I don't, I mean, I think you, you, the question is who is your obligation to as a writer? Is it to your audience or is it to yourself? 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.
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So now let's play,

I want to play a Malcolm Gladwell game in this moment here so someone might go but malcolm how can i how can i trust this because now like you you just wrote a book that says i shouldn't trust what you wrote in the other book and then how do you like 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 right it's that's that I've moved on. It's just not where I am at this moment.
So you're saying like 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? You know, in the same way, it wasn't to go back to my dad.
When my dad changed his mind, sometimes it would be, he would go from, you know, A to Z.

But sometimes it was just, he 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 have a friend of mine, I was playing the game of, I love playing the magic wand game, where if you could change, 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 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 got to live there for a year. And her argument would be- This only works for people with addresses, by the way.
I'm just going to point this out. If you're unhoused.
Yeah, if you, 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,

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 you have to do a version of this in your life.

so my I have a

simple thing I do

which is

Thank you. the world in a kind of ethical way is I have, you have to do a version of this in your life.
So my, I have a simple thing I do, which is I try and change the people I, I follow a very small number of people on Twitter and I change, 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 people.
Just trying to, because you get exposed to new. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I try to get the, I also want, so I follow the Ukrainian war for, 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 it's super interesting my favorite guy's 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 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.

Yeah.

And he zeroes in on the tires.

Oh, I remember this.

Do you 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.

Yeah. And he goes this whole rant about tires, but how you got it.
You got to be rotating the tires. If the truck's in storage, the tire's going to break apart.
It's like, and if there's tires of that, that says that you're this doesn't work and you don't have this. And like, I was like, so that's like, you have to keep exposing yourself.
That's how you, that's how you learn about what you need to right? Yeah. So now when I read something conventional about the war, I have a slightly different perspective because I have trends in my head.
Yeah. And I'm asking a different set of questions than I would have otherwise.
It's not that I'm a skeptic. It's just that I have a different, you know, I'm looking at it from a different perspective.
What 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.
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 going to 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 a crazy conservative.
Yeah. There, I thought about this recently because I was, I go to this little coffee shop in my nearby hometown upstate.
And there's always these two old guys who are in the 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 encyclic 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 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 occupy this huge position in people, the way people related to the world. They saw, you know, 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, you know, sports function in that way.

And 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 about sports and politics will never come up. You know, even my parents would be a good example.
My, you know, white father, black mother, a lot of people looked at them and said, you know, you guys are so different. And that's not how they organized their life.
They thought they were exactly the same. They thought we were two committed Christians who, you know, their fathers read the same books.
I think that's the issue. It's just not good to be, 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 would 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 um uh you know like on demand you 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 but what a lot of people don't realize is it's robbed us of communal um consumption but then what have we all seen the debate oh i saw the debate oh i saw the 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 all like to 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 Trump assassination is live. The Olympics are live.
The Superbowl is live. But I think what it's done is it's robbed us of shared realities is what I think.
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.
Yeah. I'm so, I realize now when I'm outside of live, like many people, I'm lost.
Yeah. I mean, I watched Perfect Couple.
Yeah. Why did I watch Perfect Couple on Netflix? That's like, I'm never getting, I've got like six, got five episodes in.
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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 so easy 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,

ooh, 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?

The admissions?

Yeah.

Okay, 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 I varsity sports than Harvard. So everyone thinks that the sports-obsessed schools are like in the South.
No, 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.

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,

Thank you. 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.
Rowing, got it. Middleweight or heavyweight and lightweight rowing.
And each team is like, what is it, 25? I've forgotten. Some incredible number.
Fencing. Okay.
Fencing. Sailing.
Oh, got it. How do you know about sailing? Sailing.ennis.
Tennis. Interesting.
Tennis. Now, rugby.
Now, rugby, so you guys are Africans, particularly you, you guys are serious rugby playing people. Yeah.
Understand that in the American context. Oh, no.
Yes. Rugby is a very different animal.
Not playing rugby and, you know. things.
Right, right. Field hockey, squash.

You can see where I'm going with this.

So they reserve.

Now, 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 to be good at white people's sports.
The whole thing is so hilariously obvious. For years, they've been pretending.
Oh, no, no, we believe the athlete brings something special to the camp. No bullshit.
I do this thing with tennis. In order to play Division I 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 $100,000. When you add up all the things.
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 school's going to, culture's going to turn over with each new wave of smart immigrants that come.
So you're going to be all Jewish in the to be all Jewish in the fifties. Then you're going to be all Korean.
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't, but you can see how if your conception of what your school is, is a place where you have lots of preppy kids in blazers, you can't play

that game. 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. You know, 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 like a certain group of people and then all of a sudden was and then it would like 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 you know what i mean let me let me ask you a question welcome like in in the book there are

many moments where you talk about like um it's not necessarily the tipping point but it's like

some of the some of the larger things that made something happen like for instance you talk about

I love you. the book there are many moments where you talk about like um it's not necessarily the tipping point but it's like some of the some of the larger things that made something happen like for instance you talk about will and grace you know and you go this is like the show that that changes people's perspectives on gay people in america etc you know and then some people go like oh but what about ellen ellen was on before that and in the in the opioid section you know when you talk about the sackler family you're, you're like, this is, you know, the story they told them, the passive voice when they're defending themselves.
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 has moved society or shifted in a certain direction versus others.
So the Will and Grace, let's do a little bit of this one. That was really interesting.
So there's a really brilliant woman whose work I read and 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 and she says, Ellen, yes, had a gay character,

first openly gay character on network television, But those three rules were still in effect. 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 even 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, 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,

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 an.

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, are we really going to fight about this? And it just goes away.
So it's actually funny. When I was reading through that chapter, and when I was reading through some of the chapters about over stories that you talk about, 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. 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.
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, 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 you'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? Yeah.
And I actually think that becomes part of the problem is like now we are not witnessing people as human beings. story is about you are black and so now because of your blackness you must make the black blackity black it's 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 it's not 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 uh by the early 21st century most americans thought that there was something pathological about being gay um or they had some revulsion it no it was quite specific it was 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 just about a successful relationship involving a— And in the previous sort of, to get to your point point trevor the preachiness assumed the problem was specific to something about the gay person yeah and the way they practiced their life no no no it was this 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 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, sometimes we'll have 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.
you're like latif why don't you do this you always do this joe joe why are you doing this i don't know zero technique you have zero technique why are you doing this and it's like shut up joe and then like you what i what i realized the one day was almost magical is like everyone on that team has a human has a human example of somebody from another country so if you say to them do you 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 getting then he's just like you know them you know him as a human being does that make does that make sense and i think sometimes like in these stories we forget that we don't 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 yeah 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 is for straight people and even then we're going to 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 also the soccer thing is great because the key to getting people, to making that magic happen is to have everyone, give everyone a job to do. You're all busy.
That's why it works. Right? That's the kind of, like, I always, the busyness thing, if you're all focused on the game you're all busy.
That's why it works. Right? That's the kind of, I always, the busyness thing, if 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.
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Malcolm, I'm curious. You say you went back, read 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 do like there's a revised edition and you write a chapter and you're like it's a summary why is it revisiting and it's a whole book because i'm crazy i don't have enough to do because i have because having two kids apparently is just really easy and i can do you know i got.
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.
Malcolm's like, I wrote another book. No, I have.
I've worked it out that I have 45 minutes to myself a day. Okay.
Between 10 and 10.45. That's my time.
Okay. And you write your book.
That's all I got and you write your book no no no no um no i don't know um i i also thought it would be fun i actually had more i've been enjoying myself tremendously over the last um i've had a kind of ever since i started the podcasting stuff it's me up about, I'm not, I'm a lot less precious about the stuff I do. And I'm doing different kinds of stories.
And I, so I just, I, my position now is why not? And why not do something? It sounds like it'll be interesting. Who knows what'll happen? And the turning point for me was when I started the podcast and i started doing weird show like shows on cranky kind of you know going after golfers or whatever um 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 um which you know i don't really know that much about music i.
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,

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.

Right.

And that,

when I realized that,

I was like,

oh,

this clarifies everything.

I shouldn't be,

Thank you. I mean, it's 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 going to 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 going to get emotional. She was involved with a guy on death row, 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 going to take the long path. We took 16 hours, whatever it was, to get there.
Wow. 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 was like, sorry, I'm sorry, sir, 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? And there's a lot of that in this book. There's a lot of it just sitting and listening to people 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 you know because i i think of the different paths the different universes that malcolm gladwell could have been in you could have been someone that got more serious and and and more prescriptive and you know you could have written a book about and now let me tell you it's it's 20,000 hours. And here's what else you're going to do.
It's not just the windows, it's the doors and the floors and the sidewalks. 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. 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 not that person actually, you know? And I, I've noticed that 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,

do you know what I'm saying?

Can I tell you my South Africa story on this right front?

Yeah,

for sure.

Now I forget.

The president of South Africa,

his name is Ram.

Ramaposa.

Ramaposa.

So I'm at this conference in South Africa.

Actually, that's when I texted you because I was walking around Cape Town

and I was like, white people know their real estate.

And Trevor's like, yes, they do.

So I go to this conference and Ramaphosa is speaking.

He 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.
And it's 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 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 you know having a lot of people been leaving south africa aren't you worried this guy says now it's 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 it's like totally changed my perception of it's that's right they're the the ones who were tough enough and were interested and committed and like at his point was like let them go you know we're here it's beautiful 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 i think we need to go back and look at the 10 000 hours you're absolutely right i'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.

I have to stop myself.

What are you doing?

Like, I can't see it.

You got to stop myself. What are you doing? You got to stop it.
I'm for 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.
This is another thing that's totally surprising not saying your 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 there's a different side of you that comes up so i'm i'm asking how have they affected the way you see data or stories or the world or even your impact on how you approach your work yeah because they always ask women this question so i like that trevor's asking a man yeah um well i always look 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 So it is part of like, they just become the center of your universe. And everything else sort of fades away in importance.
Any disappointment I have is irrelevant to them. It's just so liberating.
My three-year-old this morning just wanted to draw. She's making a picture of her.
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 the nanny. That's like, that's 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 like, it's hilarious. It's this surrender.
It is surrender. But our kids are so different.
My four-year-old threw 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 parents.
That's epic. But he's great.
He's great. But he has these moments of like, he becomes really serious.
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. That's all, 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. I have a theory.

Trevor wants to bring back beating kids.

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.

Thank you. 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 going to go formulate the idea and then we'll come back. I'm totally down with this.
Let's go back to the village. I wish someone else another day would come over and say, we could be helping each other.
100%. If I see you across the room at some restaurant anytime, 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 was 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 Jody Avigan.

Our senior producer is Jess Hackl. Claire Slaughter is our producer.
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