This is the ten percent happier back ass. Damn Harris again. Today we have what we in the journalism business call a boy. I get it's Malcolm Gladwell, author of six new york times best sellers, including the tipping point, blink and outliers he's also host of the massively popular revisionist history, podcast and host of a new podcast called the legacy of speed, which we'll talk about in this review, I should say he's also the co founder of Pushkin industries, which produces all kinds of great podcasts Wanted to have him on the show to talk about some of the issues he's been addressing on his part casts of late, including kindness, generosity and self sacrifice and we do in fact talk to him about all of the above. But our aim

you happen to fall on a day when Gladwell was at the centre of tabloid slash twitter dust up over some comments. He recently made about working from home, which he said I'm quoting here is not in your best interest. There has been as you might imagine, quite a backlash against that comment, and in this interview you will hear gladwell respond at length. We also talk about the importance of flow states, how he personally relaxes his favorite hack for improving his daily life. Why everybody should have a lifelong practice or pursued. His is running. Why I writing and reading about other people- is such an important human act. What he thinks now about his famous ten thousand hours argument and what he says. Maybe one of his biggest journalistic mistakes. They will get started with Malcolm Gladwell, read after this one last thing before we get started

here? As some of you know, I retired from my day job plus october, hasty, being ackerman on You see news, and that means I've got a lot more control over my own schedule, which means this summer. I've taken a grand total of three weeks of vacation, which is unprecedented and glory. I hope you have been able to get some time to yourselves this summer. Our companion, meditation app ten percent happier. Can help you preserve some of the peace and mental space you might feel on vacation. Even when you come home and life gets more complicated, especially when fall arrives to make sure you have a chance to try it out we're offering ten per cent happier subscriptions at a forty percent discount until september. First, we do not do discounts of this size all the time and, of course nothing is permanent, as we say in buddhist circles, so get this deal before it ends by going to ten percent dot com, slash forty, that's ten percent! One word all spelled out dot com, slash four zero four

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from gladwell work. Individual. Thank you did so. I'm proud to the gills, for this interview have got all these questions about two issues related to the mind and how we do life based on your most recent episodes and some are coming episodes and a new show. Your launching, however, I did is thing I was never do which is last night. I went on twitter and said in an interview, Malcolm Gladwell, tomorrow. What should I ask him, and I was over loaded with questions I did this has never happened. Where I got a ton of good questions, it seems There there's a bit of a kerfuffle right now about some comments you made about working from home, so I thought I'd just start there and a sense of what's on your, You you, I guess in another interview, said it's not in your best interests to work from home keys, more about what was on your mind when you said that in our you surprised by the response, no not terribly surprised by the response. What I meant was

When I look at my own career and conversations that I've had with other people about how did they learn to be good, what they do? How do they come to find meaning insignificance in their work? Their answers, overwhelmingly were about the social experience of work. The answers are overwhelmingly not about what I learned this way, but rather what I learned from this person. What I am the lesson dispersed and taught me this. It's true my life. I spent the first twenty years of my career going into an office every day and I realize looking back on that. That was an incalculable important learning experience, and so I was simply making a point that I completely understand and why going to the office every day has not been an auction during covert.

and is not an option for all of us all the time, but I just wanted to make the point that win when you abandon the social context of work. You give something up and I think we should be honest about what were giving up under those circumstances. That's really are not prescribing the people. How they got to live, lives, but if I hadn't gone to work for the first twenty twenty five years of my working career, I wouldn't be here- I wouldn't be honest- show. I wouldn't be any good at what I did? You know in. Do looking back on my life, so that was really all I was saying we ve never been face to face before in other worldly digital, you don't look old for what it's worth. You're. So your central point is: if I'm hearing you you're, not wagging a finger at people who are working from home right

oh you're, saying especially to young people. There is at an end use the word incalculable amount to gain from being in professional community where you can learn from others. I think that's, and I think that on some level. Most people recognise. That fact. I've. You know we loaded a whole series of complications on that fact. You know we have a housing crisis in this country. Many people live far from the place that they work for Can I make reasons their spending three hours a day commuting or two hours a day commuting working from home can be a blessing in a certain sense. So in that position I totally understand or somebody's got kids if they have to pick up. What do you know four o clock from school? I mean

we can all list the reasons why I'm working at home would have it's advantages. I have at certain points in my career work from home, so I understand I'm just pointing out that you do lose something, and now you prepared. Are you fine with that? And well ever since I wrote my book outliers, a big theme of ours was this notion of what is meaningful work and in writing that book I became convinced that one of the fundamental ways in which. We give dignity to fill our fellow human beings is that we allow them the opportunity to engage in meaningful work, and I think meaningful work is a lot harder when you're isolated, some people can handle havin. Some people can't

and you know I don't want to rush into a world where we are impoverishing a set of people just because it's you know it's a lot cheaper for companies to have everyone work at home. I mean they. We can go in that direction. I don't know if that is the end of the day suits our interests. Do you work from home now no. I broke from the office fur from the beginning of cover. We opened this office at the beginning of cove id imo. We kept it open through covered because I moved into a new phase in my career, where I'm doing collaborative were really for the first time the book is solitary work, a pike asked his group creative and I found a really hard to do- grew creative work in isolation, so I felt it was very important that we have an office for me team, and that we get together as often as we could, you said you what surprised by the response, but my twitter feed north, my at replies into it.

ever since I became a happiness guy in transition of journalism. I don't get a lot of tart replies. I was at maybe prices in the right word, but it was worthy. Remark, how people took your comment as and out of touch rich guy people who have exigencies in their life, how to live their lives. Well, I mean I was lucky enough to have some tabloids ryan, write about my remarks in a way that removed all nuance and subtlety. I just thought the first time that's happened, so you know I didn't say it's not really a conversation you can have on twitter. I am. I surprised this point in my life that a twitter conversation capture something less than the truth now, so these things happen. Eyes is not the first time I've been in the middle of a twitter brouhaha, so I'm kind of them got overly troubled by

I read an interview with you worried somebody asked you do care what other people think of you and you said something to the effective. Not that much is that true and if that still holds valuable at a moment like this. Well I mean I wouldn't be human if I wasn't in some way sensitive to that I mean we're social things, but I you know I always try to keep in mind that what people call a twitter controversy is not a real life controversy right. It's a controversy involving a very very, very tiny fraction of cuba, beings who spend a lot of time on twitter and take what twitter says seriously or who consume the daily mail gossip every morning or three hundred eighty million people in america view ass. Also hundred and million what they think of malcolm globules position on working from home,

three hundred and seventy nine thousand nine hundred thousand would say who's Malcolm Gladwell, dislike of hard under those circumstances to get to work up, I take her. About twitter and social media generally. I guess, though, the deeper question for me is: much armoured, you have against other people's opinions about, you, because I know I care a lot too much and it's pretty easy for my dad to get ruined with one stray tweet like I said I don't that often my days get ruin generally by other things. So I'm just curious I would love to hear you hold forth a little bit on the extent to which you do or do not care and any tools that you use to move through the wood were you are you know you said molly

People wouldn't know who you are, but I think most people do know you are in that comes with strain yeah. Well, it's not the first time this has happened, so I'm fifty eight hours, fifty nine I've win one we're not have been in the public eye for twenty odd years. Not always billina public. I am public. I had a lot of success, but you know they've ve been numerous occasions where people have taken shots at me. Each time it happens, it matters less and also the thing that so weird about forums like twitter. Is it people way the negative comments more heavily than the positive com

so tat people can say I love that would have to say something very nasty about you. You remember the two. We set your initial response and I've learned to reverse that, like you know, I was sitting outside having a cup of coffee this morning for came into work And to people came binds at a european level. I love your stuff, like that. The reality of what my days or like people never come up and see nasty things. They say nice things I You know I continue to sell books and people continue to listen to my bike gases. Twenty people out there who like what I do know that ought to be sufficient. We can say that you're a failure as a public figure if a hundred percent of the world doesn't agree with you at all times right, that's crazy standard, Joe Biden, the president united states them

who is arguably more important than any individual in the world. What's his priority right now, it's like thirty five percent. He now, if Joe Biden took that as serious as you people who take twitter com, it seriously he wouldn't get out of bed in the morning anyway. if able to pass the climate bill last week, right like he. Let's just put all this in perspective, you have to do what you want to do with your life and put all of this kind of noise who should decide? I here at least two things in there that are scalable from your experience to the rest of us one is you said each time it happen matters less having that's it. It's kind of exposure therapy to criticism the other thing. I heard was you're kind of king of the hard wired evolution. Airily bequeathed negativity, bias that exist in all of our brains and minds, you're saying I'm not gonna, let the two negative tweets come

my opinion of an event, I am going to focus on the ten positive ones. Are the people who stopped me on the street yeah yeah, I mean it's very important too. Stand at what's different in the world in many many ways. It's a very good thing that for the first time in history, you have exposure to what people who are not part of your life. Think of you. I there was no mechanism for that fifty years ago or fifteen years ago. Certainly, two hundred years ago. Virtually all of your feedback was from people who moved in your orbit now Someone can say whatever they want, who you really know whether from society- weird moment- and you have to kind of- can keep tat in mind. Ok, like I said, actually got some very thoughtful questions, coming over the transom, the twitter we'll get to those later. I want to talk about some of the

so you ve, been running on one of your part- casts revisionist history Recent episode of that show. You talk a lot about the idea of kindness and a kind of kindness contagion how kindness can lead to kindness. Can you describe the episode in question here? The sort of give us the? story and then explain a little bit how you landed on this conclusion about the transmits ability of kindness, yeah I'd always wanted to do in episode about when I was a kid in high school. In the end of the seventies, and the vietnam war there was this flood of vietnamese refugees, and my parents were part of a group of people who sponsored three refugees from the former suffering. And they were a part of our lives for years thereafter, even up until my father's death, you know one of them came to his funeral and would come to birthday party.

in, and it was one of those kind of slightly magical stories about three people they shut up with. Speaking english without a dime to their name. and they all went on to have an education. They started families, their kids are doing the most amazing things, and I always wanted to do something on that sort of understand what that was about. Why did this ran a group of people from small town senator where my parents are from? How did they come to welcoming these strangers? to their home and why did it work? So I went home to see my mom in February and I asked her to invite the group, those of them who were still life can they are all under late, eightys and ninetys. The group of people who had gotten to get in the seventies to bring of his refugees they open Well, we're pretty good. I just recorded the conversation I mentioned have wondered you know what

What do you know I didn't have? I didn't have any more in my head than that, and then I talked to my brother, who was the principal of an elementary school in our same little town and whose elementary school had took in so many I mean I think, we've forgotten what it is. Thirty or forty percent of the school ended up being the children of refugees in the time that he was there. I just had him tell stories about what that was like, and then I just sort of put this. it's together the very sort of simple, but I was struck by how and traumatic the stories were that nobody gave up their lives to bring in these people. Nobody took on an extra job to support them, no one. It was this kind of lots of people doing small acts. It adds up to something big, and that was that was the kind of very, very simple, very, very obvious, but I thought very beautiful inside from all of these stories. I've been writing a book for the last four plus years.

love and kindness, and I been thinking recently, you know we hear a lot about the banality of evil, but there's I am drum this to kindness to it doesn't have to be operatic, it can be pretty basic, but let's get to this notion of how kindness can be get more kindness. What did you learn about that in the course of making that episode will? Well, you know is the very interesting things that I didn't really pull this out in the episode as much as perhaps I should have it said my parents were, like, I said part of this group of, say ten people back in the seventies who brought over the refugees and when you talked to my started with my own parents, one of the reasons they did, that is that their parents had done that. My father's parents, my grandparents in england,. they welcomed a stream of people into their home. When my dad was growing up same with my mother's parents in jamaica, and then when my mother went to england in the fifties as a kind of black student in a kind of foreign land, she was welcomed as people's house

It was made manageable by the fact that all these strangers, which is have over for dinner on a weekend or something and just made her feel at home. So there was this kind of practice that was being passed down from generation to generation that this was not some kind of heroic thing, but which is part of what you do as a human being. Is you welcome changes into your own, and I see that as that kind of hereditary practice as being a powerful part of how kindness persists in the world that you see it being modeled and just becomes part of your repertoire, bade her met humbling to her the story, though, because I like to, I think we all like to think of ourselves ass, good people, but I don't know that I would take a stranger in my home.

An indefinite period of time. I would you I don't know it would be well do know so very interesting point. So if they had been asked to do that, then we're moving beyond kindness to sacrifice to something much harder: the beauty of ten people getting together and sponsoring pyramids refugees is this. You have enough resources that no one has to bear the burden right. So if it had just been my parents, they would have had to take three refugees into their home and they wouldn't have done it will never base. There would have an incredible burden. Both my parents were working at that point, but that's not what happened. Ten of them got together, pool their resources and got an apartment town and just checked in with them, and you know ten people checking it on. People and helping them is a very different story than one person the more people.

we engage in act of kindness is collectively the easier it gets and that's a crucial part of it. It has to be manageable if you want the kind of kindness virus to spread, if you make it impossible, no one's going to do it. You touch others a little bit Can you say more, but the difference between sacrifice kindness and generosity yeah I was. I was struck I was along the same lines. I was trying to kind of come up with a commitment scale for what it means to be good to someone else, and I sometimes so. One of the ways we get intimidated by the challenge of doing good is that we think the challenge of doing good necessarily involve sacrifice sacrifices where you give up something of yourself or take on some for another, and we ve come to think in order for me to be of Real value in the world have to sacrifice, but I just want to point out that there are lesser levels of commitment that also work

and in the middle of that episode, I tell a story about a holocaust survivor. I found an old history of someone who escaped from her. Nutrition, camp and state alive in poland until the end of the war, and it tells story of how we stayed alive and no one sacrificed for him. And no one was even particularly generous towards him, but lots and lots of them the people were kind towards him gave him a meal. Let him stay in your house for a day, and that was enough, because there were so many people willing to be kind. He survived, and I think he he understood that if he was to stay in someone's house in someone's basement for three months in the middle of poland in the second world war, he was putting them at risk. He didn't want to do that. He wanted kindness, he wanted manageable and are applicable, and he knew that that's how he was gonna stay alive and it never occurred to me until I listen to that guy's oral, his

with that, in some ways, repeated acts of kindness are preferable to solitary, extraordinary and heroic acts of sacrifice. Let me move on to another set of episodes on revision. Is history. You dedicate three episodes to a human experiment. Starvation, which were I'll not solitary, does strike me as a pretty extreme act on the part of the. the participants in this experiment in sacrifice. Can you describe the experiment in question and then maybe tell us a little bit about what you learned about self sacrifice in the course of this reporting yeah I. So this is a famous experiment from second world war. It occurred in a university minnesota, nineteen, forty four to forty five and it involved a group of thirty six men who agreed to starve themselves over the course of

bulk of a year in order that of famous nutritionists named answer case. Could study them and understand what happens to people when they undergo pro longbill nourishment, and what the best ways of nurse and back to healthcare and the feeling was that during the second world war there were millions of people around the world who were suffering from a lack of food and We need to be rescued after the war and we did not know how to do it. We didn't know how much to feed them, what to feed them when the feed them we didn't know what was wrong with them. We didn't know what does it mean to star for six months? Scientists had no clue, so these guys essentially offered themselves up as guinea pigs in pursuit of that notion, and so these these three episode. the story of what happened to them, and I am also preoccupied with the question of wood. We do a kind of experiment like that today. Could we do an experiment like that today

and the answers we couldn't. We don't allow experiments like that to happen anymore, and I I dont know why because the more you get into the story of these men- the more you realize that a they suffered tremendously I mean Benjamin had eating disorders for the rest of their life. They had health problems that dogged them for the next. if two years by almost every single one of them would have done it over again? They felt that they learned so much from experience and they were so proud of how they contributed to our understanding of

how to help others. They felt that their moral horizons had been so expanded by that process of sacrifice that they consider to be one of the most important things had ever done, and I I you know in considering the question of whether such an experiment could be done today. I entertain the notion that we don't understand that idea of self sacrifice anymore. The we dont think its legitimate for somebody to want to give up that much of their own health and wellness on behalf of others were baffled by that notion. I don't think we should be baffled by the notion. Why do you say that we don't understand it anymore? I was a million answers that question, there are men who volunteered for this experiment where all conscientious objectors, so they were men of deep religious faith whose faith made it impossible for them to

fight in war, and so already at the outset of the war they had agreed to be social price on behalf of their beliefs. They were comfortable with that notion, comfortable with the complexities of sitting at a war against a profoundly evil, for senor and we're trying struggling to find some other way to contribute to societies were in a moment, turn their backs on and that willingness on their part to kind of engage with the complexities of their moral position is something that I dont say is absent today. But I want to say that we're not is

Comfortable with that today you know in one of the episodes. I talk a lot about how much controversy there was about human challenge, trials recovered or human challenge trials, where, in order to speed up research into stopping covered, a healthy person agrees to be infected with carpet and the amount of ink that was spilled in the medical ethics community decrying. This practice saying we can't possibly allow people to do this on. My point is why. why cant someone say I'm willing to take a risk of a of the millions of people who are being struck down by this disease. There's something about the kind of notion of thinking about your obligations to the collective, that's harder today, and it was back. Then what do you think's going on there I mean, would you tie it to their minor standing at theirs I don't know how to measure this, but there's been a rise in self centered in among americans, but

see another alternative explanation would be what is often. right it is. Safety is the idea that there is. Kind of nanny, state, culturally and actually telling us? We can't do things? Do you have a sense of what drives in this the emphasis on self sacrifice, I don't have a good or simplest against her. I mean I, I think. As all the things you ve described I think a lot of it comes from a very good place, which is a lot of what was called noble self sacrifice in the past was not that at all. It was exploitation, and I think that we're very sensitive, maybe we'd over corrected from that, but you have to amber that not long after that experiment I described was at tuskegee syphilis experiment right where group of african american men were unwittingly used as guinea pigs in an incredibly harmful experiment around what syphilis does to people's bodies and

the scientific committee had no problem just to find out at the time of the experiment, so I mean there's plenty of cases where The human desire to volunteer for these kinds of things has been exploited, and so I think we're legitimately sensitive to that, but I don't think that I think we've gone is maybe in some sense, as we've gone too far we'll be right back with more malcolm gladwell. After this, when you're scrolling through social media, how can you tell what's real anything can be posted on line without being fat chat, but if you heard about the secret to permanent weight loss, wouldn't you give it a follow. Tommy's occur, brought found

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Let me ask about undue podcasting launched. This is not part of revisionist history. It, sir, then alone show called the legacy of speed. It's about and you'll tell us more, but it's about african american track and field stars in the sixties, who mounted a social protest. It became quite famous I'm wondering if you could just tell us about the show- and also do you see the activism of these men within the framework of the discussion we've just been having about sacrifice kindness, generosity, it's an interesting question. So yeah this was a podcast to track smith. The running brand came to us with this. Ideally, can we do a podcast about that? Iconic photograph from the nineteen sixty eight mexico city olympics of Tommie smith and John Carlos on the victory, stand the two hundred meters with their heads, bowed in there

gloved fists raised in their black knee socks, making the black power salute in sympathy with you know what was going on in in the united states in the civil rights movement. He was one of the most famous photographs of the twentieth century and there turns out to be this. Extraordinary story bind both about the fact that all of these guys are from place. They all went to san jose state or coach for the same guy, who revolutionized the way we think about running the all inspired by Harry Edwards, who still an incredible force into social justice, fight and they were all challenging. The notion that an athlete not have a right to speak to the world outside of their sport. and in tat moment I think, changed forever. Our definition of who has a right to speak, in many domains. There was a feeling that your job was to hey within the boundaries of that domain. If you were a mailman you

of the male. If you were a musician, you play music. If you were to have You ran or you jumped up you drivelled, a basketball. You were not allowed to kind of step outside of that role and speak to utter stuff. When calling capron ec, does it a couple years back in the twenty first century, he's blackball by the national football league, so their persists? Be this notion? Is You cannot be fully human and raise your voice as a human being You are in one of these kind of subcultures the package an attempt to examine that question and understand. Where did these

as they're all in their early twenties. They have no money who basically haul a middle finger up to the world and say you know what I'm going to speak up, because I'm a young black man and it's thinking sixty eight and I'm not going to turn down this opportunity to make myself heard it's just like it isn't his. He was an insanely, fascinating story to tell: did they pay a price for it? Did their act become a kind of self sacrifice. Oh, my god, they totally paid the price for it. I mean they were sent home from the olympics. They struggled to find jobs afterwards. It took them years to kind of find your place back in the world in the sport death threats and they were denounced, denounce dynamic could go on and on and on they came home from mexico city to the most kind of law, and resounding chorus of booze in here treated vitriol, I mean awaited. We were talking about twitter earlier. I this head

twitter is nothing I want. Those guys went through. You know, took a walk in the park compared to you know what they had to do with him is extraordinary and much respect. You mentioned briefly there. coach, I believe you described the running coach I think is: is but winter as bringing a kind of meditative approach to running? Can t say more about that? Yes, this fascinating thing there was a prevailing notion in sport up through the nineteen. Fifty the sixties Then, if you wanted to run as fast as you can possibly run the way you did, that was too great. Your teeth and tense. Your upper body enter furiously dry grimes back and forth, and it kind of will your way to victory, and this guy, but winter was his track. Coach at san jose state has an experience in the second world war. Where he's

I have a team working with pilots trying to deal with mental breakdown, psychological breakdowns by pilots, and they come to understand that the way to help pilots deal with the extraordinary stresses they were under was to teach them how to relax that, The peak performance in something as extraordinarily demanding as flying up war were to fighter plane in combat, was to teach someone to various forms: meditation relaxation techniques to do the opposite of obvious effort and winter takes that idea and says

This must be true of sprinting that this idea, that obvious effort is the only path to peak performance, is wrong, that a sprinter while he or she is trying to run as fast as they can ought to be relaxed. And so, if you look around a big track of your family, so this is obvious to me. But if you look today, you look at one hundred metre final at the world championships two weeks ago and look at the athletes in slow motion, the great ones shelly and fraser price. Jamaican sprinter, arguably the greatest sprinter of all time. I was just yesterday watching a video of her at a meet in monaco. She won one hundred metres and they had showed her she's running in slow motion. and she so relaxed her upper body. It looks like she's going for a walk in the park. She's focused, but she's blocked out the crowd says nothing.

He's all over the place, she's absolutely in the moment, but she is so fluid and so graceful and so elegant, even if she is running faster than almost Any woman has run in the history of mankind. One person is run faster: the chilean johannesburg suppress that idea was it now. It makes sense to us was so deeply paradoxical and controversial in the nineteen sixty seven and the sky, but winter was the guy who convince the world that no, you you have to retreat from the extremes. If you want to perform at the extreme. It's interesting you brought up, Fighter, pilots: my grandfather was training to be a fighter pilot in world war. Two and according to his daughter, my mom. He kept crashing the planes and they booted him out, so he probably could have used a few sessions with but winter, but on the track tip. You were talking about this sprinter and

level of relaxation? By contrast, I don't know much about trade, so I'm propaganda, mangle or misidentified his person, but I think it was, I think, is a famous videos, Jackie joiner kersey, running the hurdles and getting into her own head and starting to clip the on the hurdles and they all kind of falls apart and said that seems like the privacy of flow? Yes, yes and youth or think about. Some of us- yes, so Simone byles, when she kind of refused herself from the competition she recognized that she had lost it said that she had had a very bad experience in one of the preliminaries and she realized it

When she loses that state of flow and flow is what we're talking about here, that she was putting her her health risk coming chicken eager, paralysed yourself in a instant if you dont, do something wrong, and jim in German asks that point. So this is like is not a trivial question and the kind of speaking of it. Well, it was interesting. Wasn't it how many people took the opportunity to say she was a quicker to go after her incomplete misunderstanding of what it takes to be great add what is just about the most demanding of letting feet harm in the world right now, people didn't stand that like this is as much a mental and psychological feet as it is a physical feet. Yeah me: nobody cares about my opinion on this, but I will just say that I thought what she did was not only was it wisely self protective, but it was heroic

that she's now normalizing mental health issues, which of course, are you know, a part of being human she's normalizing it for millions of people who otherwise Might I have a role model in that regard? We're a relaxation and flow, I'm wondering for you. What do you do you know you're, so busy, you're, so prolific. How d you achieve any level of relaxation and what impact that have and your inner an outer life. Well, I'm a runner, so Is my meditative act, you re run without headphones or because I'm I want that kind of release from the world

Doing that is very I've, been injured, had been injured for the last couple of months and am and was unable to run with the frequency that I had before, and I paid the price I mean it's really clear to me. Sleeping suffered sense of wellbeing suffered, so you know I'm acutely aware of of how crucial it is to have some kind of outlet that allows you to break the umbilical cord with the world for a little bit, do you think the people closest to you would have notice to the change in you during the injury? Yeah, probably yeah May I see it when I break my whatever love this term, but but of self care regime, especially if I don't have just to meditate just

Various members of my inner dramatic persona get more of noxious and more prominent, and I have less self awareness and therefore am owned by them more frequently and everybody suffers yeah yeah, it's funny is I've, been with my fellow runners. We ve been had been engaging in this kind of public brainstorming about how to encourage people to take up running as a lifetime activity, not just Did you in high school, and it is because I am aware- and all my fellow members are aware of just how extraordinarily valuable, taking up an activity as a kid and keeping at it through middle age is now we're trying to go back now and rethink at that age when we recruiting high school in scholar when you recruit kids into lifetime practices. What kind of lifetime practices do we want to recruit them into, particularly if you

I believe- and there is overwhelming evidence for It- that we're going through a mental health crisis right now. Those are the questions we need to be taking really seriously. I something's wrong and there are probably twenty things we have to do: to fix it and helping people find lifetime. Practices of things like exercise is clearly one of them. I think the data are pretty clear. Even before the pandemic we've seen pretty significant spikes in anxiety, depression, addiction, loneliness and suicide. That went unfortunately on steroids, and I dont say that my way in in the pandemic. Is there something special about running or do you think any kind of exercise, any kind of sport? Any kind of musical instrument perhaps would be the lifetime practice that would fit the bill here. Well, you know, as a runner, I am obliged contractually to promote my support

Do I think, no? No there's, obviously any number of you know my father was not. Nobody was a gardener. Any walked dog like religiously days the same thing like there any number of things that can function in this way,. I remember years ago, when I was just starting out as a writer, I remember coming across this study. I think it was from the fifties or sixties. It was such a fantastic. I forgotten it. It was a guy trying to figure out who got colds. So he steady, look a massive group of people. And had the mark, how many colds they got over the course of a winter, and would he discovered He saw a relationship. Now was this, you know correlation or causation He saw a relationship between what he called the were of worlds. People belong to and the number of calls they got and the more worlds you belong to the fuel calls you got.

So, for example, you're someone who coaches little league is an active member of your church has a job, cluck stamps and love cycling at five worlds, and this point was the person with five worlds gets few calls and a person who just work sixty hours a week and his reasoning was fat but wait. The pursues in five roads is exposed to weigh more people than but it was a physiological was that if something goes wrong in one of those worlds, you have four others that will raise her spirits. You lose your job, but then you go to church on sunday and you gotta community, supports you and then you go coasts. The league and the kids are delighted to see you and

Then you go home and you work on your stamp collection. You feel better. Then you go for long bike ride in his point was like you need to have buffers and the more buffers you have, the healthier physically you'll, be the less toll. Stress takes and that's what we're talking about here is: can we give people these other worlds to belong, to introduce them to new worlds and that'll help them dunaway? I might argue that if you strip this down to the store What, if get down to the nub of this? Yes, it is passion, intellectual engagement, but on it even simpler, yet deeper level. It is human connect. And we are social animals and overlook that to our peril yeah. He sounds like down the cheer up. You're, making a statement about working from home right now well played well played. I

from home- and I love it, but I'm an old man- and I did have those formative years in the office I went thing is today day the book coming by a guy who was one of the lead, pollsters a gallop and This is not something new but, as I love the way described it in his book, I haven't read the book. I just saw a reference to it. He describes this new trend which was for years and years and years and years Gallup has been asking americans to rank their well being on a scale of one to ten, and you used to see the classic bell. And he says now you don't see the bell curve anymore. What you see is some portion. Large portion of people are doing better than ever there. Ten out of ten, never used to tailor made me people who were tete, a tete total

yeah and at the same time as a huge number of people who are zero to ten. It's like we never saw this bulge, so you've gone from a bell curve to a double humped camel. Now this actually not to come back to the rookie from home thing. But this explains the level I think of response to the working from home comment. There's a jet are a large group of people who are way happier. with the way their life is right now than they were before no question about it? It works for them right and then there's another group of people who are dear zero, I didn't used to be the question is: how do you resolve it have a good answer that, but the conversation cannot be eternally dictated by the tens right and the fat somebody is a ten and who does love the way that that's a terrible work working does,

Doesn't mean that that aren't out there are people who are europe's who are really suffering and the tree. I used to find a way to engage with both those people and create some kind of middle ground. Now, here's the hard part, let's assume I am a tent and I've decided to work from home, Is my presence in the office necessary for the one to become a four or five thats the hard question right? In other words, list you're someone who benefited from and learn from an inn in office working environment for the first twenty years of your career, now you're working at home, I love it master. What needs to be mastered? You ve made all relationships you're to top the pyramids. Are you not worried about getting fired, but what by being at home. You are depriving the young generation of the kind of in person knowledge transfer, those necessary for them to develop and be happy. I'm not pretend I have an answer to that, but that's it.

our question right. The really hard question. I think it's a really good question I would talking to my agency yesterday in his office in new york, oh oh, he was visiting york office from his home office and allay, and he was saying just what you were saying that he does not need to go into the office, but does because, as a leader in his firm, he wants to be around the younger people who need to learn from the elders yeah. Well yeah, I mean it's. It's complicated. We'll be right back with more malcolm gladwell after this a few more questions for me. You recently produced a course for master class about writing and there is quoting there from you that I'm gonna red back to you, because I love to hear you just say a little bit more about it. The active writing. You say the active writing about us

Ours is not trivial, it's not entertainment, it's not a distraction. You don't read nonfiction. for the same reason that you too gom or watch the cartoons on tv. You read it because you're in search of something powerful and fundamental about what it means to be a better person. He tell us more about that sentiment that argument Yeah I mean I've always thought that what drives my reading and my expression of the world is a desire to step aside it myself, and it was if I find myself reading something in all, doing is affirming my own choices or my own position in the world. I think it's kind of a waste of time, what I really looking for in the things that I

it and engage with is a kind of invitation to empathy away of appreciating someone else's perspective. I found on his interviews with these guys musicians, who are active in los angeles in the thirties forest and fifties, and each one of them gave you this sandy France picture of what it meant to be a black man in l, a nineteen forty five right was it like. Who'd. You hang out with when you played with the audience, is due. Where did you learn from? How did you interact with the police? What happened when you walk down the street? All those kinds of things There is no other way to find out about that. I mean you can wash hollywood movie, but you do know that they made it up. You have to actually make an effort trying to figure that out and I sort of felicity.

Wharton to figure that out do I know why necessarily this point? No! It's just like it seems to me that there's something in that that's crucial. for I don't want to be a kind of morally alert as a human, I feel, like you have to actively investigate other people's lives in our way. Let me get some of the twitter cautions because their along these lines about how we view and treat each other species wide these days. Here's one of the questions from Thomas harbinson, he says, has the world during a tipping point in political discourse were understanding. Consideration is no longer capable in a constructive manner. If no, how do we we're getting there and if, yes, how do we move away from it? While it's funny I'm going to ask this question to someone who just spent the morning reading these interviews with these jazz musicians from the thirties and forties and fifties.

What are useful outcomes of this exercise that I've been doing and reading these interviews, It's you realize man. Was the world an uncivil place if he were a black person living in south alien nineteen? Forty, So, although I am, as alarmed as anyone by the state of public discourse in america and twenty twenty one. I am also acutely aware that it was a lot worse if you were a black person in l, a and nineteen forty. so if these guys guys were round today, they would say what are you complaining about right You just read about like how nuts the world Jim crow was, and this is within the lifetime of many americans. I, like you, will not work, if not worse, today, we're going through a bad patch but like that is a lot worse than what's going on today. So I guess in this weird way, reading about how bad

things were back then makes me feel better about Things are now and I'm optimistic will recover from this historical perspective. And be a bomb ba m. Okay. This is a question from that side tail. So three bar quest. You can take any of this or not of it. One what's has taken meditation. And free will. Has he read SAM Harris's book on free will to if Let people know just one thing that he would list as his hack or life's learning. What would that be and three. What is his key learning about human behavior? Any of those questions, strike you as a worthy of a response. Do I have a hack? I haven't read SAM Harris' book, although I have enormous respect for SAM Harris, Do I have a hack, I dunno get lots of sleep and take the long view. You know the un was in england recently and I was on this british part.

cast, and one of the things I was asked to prepare before I was against him to show they wanted an example of a small when they do This is a regular question. They asked people to come up with their small win and I love the exercise of small wins, because it is a lovely kind of shock to a better frame of mind and My my small wind was I was in london, I was getting a cup of coffee and I desperately needed to send an email. So I sit down the scottish up. and I'm looking anything, I was. I had no money and have already ordered coffee, and I desperately need the server to be really really slow so that I can get this email before they come and say we know. What do I and this is those occasions where you know my whole life? I wanted the service you really fast and, as I just ignore me, just like be a typical london waiter,

I pretend I don't exist and that's exactly what happened. They didn't find me for like forty five minutes, so it was like that was my solid and so small wins. That's a pretty good, my mom's, a big believer in small wins. That's a good life hack, another one for that might be just gratitude, yeah, looking a little harder for ways to be happy rich in space, otherwise known as the pain coach asks. What is m jeez view on ten thousand hours now. Well, same as what it always was. I mean I was one of those ideas that kind of took on a life of its own and I began to see descriptions of it, outdated, poor, vanishingly, small resemblance to my understanding of the principle. But I was just basically trying to get across the idea in outliers with that notion that mastery takes longer than we think maintain thousand hours. If a metaphor for the fact that in the

means that we have studied this playing chess being a computer programmer composing pop songs. We find that these apprenticeship periods are much longer than we would have imagined and I was interested netbook in exploring the implications of that. So if it does take ten years playing chess you couldn't even to be a international grandmaster? That means it you gotta start really young and it means your mom. Your dad's gonna drive you two tournaments right, So if you have a mamma dad who can drive into tournaments uk be international grandmaster, I'm Sally, but I defy Are you to find at international grandmaster who didn't have apparent capable of driving that person to a chest tournament just once, but over and over and over and over and over and over again right. So that gives you a powerful perspective or people they will. Why are there no international chess grandmasters from disadvantaged backgrounds, hello, because ten thousand out

it means you gotta have a parent who helped you out right, and if your parents are working two jobs, then it's not happening, is it or, if you're living so far from a place where test tournaments are didn't work, I was trying to get the social structure, the implied social structure, behind expertise, and people focused on the math there of the specificity of ten thousand hours, and from here you correctly, that's a metaphor for a shitload of time. Yes, yes, last question here from somebody named milk toast, which is, I think we need more milk toast on twitter- Ask him what he's ever been wrong about. Oh: what's he things wrong means, can be many different things. Typically, I think there,

The category of wrong with most meaningful is where you make the mistake of drawing a declarative conclusion about something where no declarative conclusion, is called for. So where knowledge is evolving either the worlds or your own knowledge right. So it means to learn from being wrong, is more than be changing your mind. It's retreating from that kind of false certainty, so it to give you an example. Ah years ago I wrote a piece god. I regret it to this day about a woman named susan love, who was a medical doctor who took a stand against hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women. She thought this was untested.

and dangerous, and there are all kinds of consequences and all the big scientists in the study said no, no, no, no, no shut up. You don't know what you're talking about, and then it turned out that we hadn't done the right kind of studies, and so we did the right kind of studies. It we discovered lo hauled susan love is right, and I were piece about susan law before the definitive studies came out and which I basically belittled. Her for standing. scientific consensus without ever asking the question of whether this was a conclusion about which we could be definitive about. It was a huge air. I think we can be definitive about the world is getting warmer. Cause has been. a million studies many different ways you can say something we're going out with the weather, but if you spent. More than ten minutes when I wrote an article examining in detail and talking to people about what How good are the studies that we have on homer, visitor.

And if you don't do it, you discover their not that good and that's what sousa lover saying right I would never written that article, so that was a case of a kind of journalistic hubris where you make two calls or three calls on a difficult subject, and you think you've mastered it. You know I wish I could say that was the last time I ever did that, but I don't think it is. I think that many of us in journalism continue to make that mistake. I mean I I was very upset at myself for that error, but but it took years for me to get upset at myself for that right, I didn't wake up to like Jesus. What did I do for years? You know in the beginning I just kind of like, oh whatever journalism and style. It's not journalism, it's that is deeply problematic. Behavior on the part of a journalist. In his case me,

two responses at what one is that doctors who loves use a professor at the harvard teaching hospitals- and am I correct about that- I think so, which is why I think she was so interested in this. yeah. What did the reason? Why bring it up his cause? If it's that susan love, she was a frequent visitor to my childhood home in massachusetts, cause she was a colleague of my father's. Oh, my Yes and I do realise he was a breast cancer doktor. Yes, yes, so, as my dad I see Susan, was a regular houseguest and if my memory serves just an awesome person but as to you or what you're describing as a mistake. I wonder if this is kind of Example of the upside of the negativity bias, because it's obvious desir utah. About it. How exercised you are about this perceived error to this day- and maybe that's good- maybe that

your or shame or remorse or whatever you want to call. It is inoculating you against future errors. Inoculation is as strong word because I dont think one example, one experience like that is sufficient and I think it's very, very easy to fall back into the trap, but I think it definitely sensitized me too, this tendency in me and in others billings, which I myself it sensitize me to that end, that category of air and beyond them? Compounded the air, because when I should have done- is I should have written up me, a copper and I didn't. I should have at least call her up when, when the world finally turned and people walk up to what she was

I should call her up and said hex number of years ago. I did you a disservice. I didn't do that. It's hard to say I screwed up really is hard. This turning into an unexpectedly humbling, podcast that was not my design. just want to say, as if low journalist I've made. many many errors, I once killed a company that wasn't dead on national television. Of the iraq war in the run up to it, and even though I was personally incredibly sceptical, I think the media did not do a great job did not cover itself in glory in the run up to the iraq war, and I was part of the mainstream media, so I bear some of the responsibility there. I would say that history will judge one of the biggest active mystic malpractice. Over the last two two thirty years has been our failure to wake up or belated waking up to climate change, and I was a party

mainstream media for that period of time, so eighties, hard. To do this public work without screwing up consequentially repeatedly. Is there something I should have asked but didn't I dont know, I think I think we ve done well. Don't you I do before can I just push you to plug a little bit. Anything. That's on your mind to remind us about where we have. We did six episodes of revisionist history. We took a little aid for the month of august. We all come roaring back with form, or in the fall- and I would encourage people to subscribe and tuning and legacy, guess speed as well. We ve got four or five episodes out already, and I have two things. I would love people listen to mountain gladwell pleasure to meet you. Thank you for calling on the shore. Thank you so much

Thanks again to Malcolm Gladwell, and that you as well to everybody who worked so hard on this ten percent happier is produced by Gabriel Zuckerman Justine davy DJ mere an lauren smith? Our senior producer is marisa, schneider men can you, I gladly is our managing producer and our executive producer is gent point scoring and mixing by poultry violet audio We'll see you all in a couple days on wednesday, for a conversation with a fascinating human being gay garfield. Who is a buddhist scholar? He's gonna go deep on this issue that we ve touched on many times on the show, but its both hard to understand and massively life improving when understood, if only for actually the notion of not self or selflessness J is just written a book on this ending he's going to argue that you are a person. You are real, you just don't have a self

impact that on wednesday, see. That can make a little ask here. If you like our show- and you want to know- or to work were doing there are some quick and very the things you can do to help us out. First, please leave us five star rating and review. Those are really helpful. There's a reason why podcast hosts ask for them all the time.

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