Malcolm Gladwell

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] Holy smokes.

[2] The best, biggest, greatest.

[3] Oh, buckle your seatbelts.

[4] Malcolm Gladwell is here.

[5] Malcolm Gladwell, of course, is the author of five New York Times bestsellers.

[6] He has the unbelievable podcast that Monica and I are obsessed with, revisionist history.

[7] Love it.

[8] You know him.

[9] He's had a million books.

[10] I've referenced him the most on this podcast.

[11] Monica will dispel that at the end in the fact check.

[12] was included on the time 100 most influential people list and touted as one of the foreign policy's top global thinkers he wrote the tipping point blank outliers what the dog saw david and goliath and his new book which is phenomenal and honestly you should listen to on audible is talking to strangers it's such an immersive wonderful experience malcolm gladwell i love you thanks for coming please enjoy the genius from up north malcolm gladwell Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[13] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[14] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[15] Now, if I were you, I'd be suspicious of the claims I'm about to make, but I can tell you nobody has been referenced more on this podcast than you.

[16] I bring you, I don't think I make it through a single episode.

[17] so did the show without referencing one of your books.

[18] I am very touched.

[19] I think you and John Crackauer are my all -time favorite nonfiction writers.

[20] You have such an amazing gift.

[21] You put it in such a delicious rapper that there's something about your structure that I'm able to retain a lot of what you write.

[22] I read Tipping Point 10 years ago.

[23] I still remembers all the stories with such detail.

[24] I've been dying for this to happen and I just want to appropriately fluff your pillows because I really look up to you and I think you have such a unique gift.

[25] So we're very flattered you're here.

[26] And we'd like to publicly thank Adam Grant for arranging this.

[27] Yes.

[28] Yes.

[29] He told us that he was a giver and he is a giver.

[30] Indeed.

[31] He delivered.

[32] Yeah.

[33] He is a massive giver.

[34] He was my favorite Adam Grant exercise is to email him and then count second.

[35] That's great.

[36] And he's so busy and yet he still is able to do it.

[37] He's on it.

[38] Yeah, he really is.

[39] But I have to give you a lot of credit because he put us on a joint email.

[40] My assumption was, I bet at best I'll hear back from him in about 10 days.

[41] Like, you'll go, shit, I should probably respond.

[42] And then that'll just ruminate upstairs for a week or so and finally you'll do it.

[43] But you were right on top of it as well.

[44] The respect here flows both ways, A, and B, when Adam weighs in, the prudent thing to do is to respond immediately.

[45] Oh, okay.

[46] You know, I just do what Adam says, and I figure that pretty much almost works out.

[47] Well, to use one of your own terms, I mean, he's kind of the ultimate connector, isn't he?

[48] He is.

[49] Think about Adam, this is, I actually would be perfectly happy to talk about Adam's entire podcast.

[50] I think what Adam is, that is absolutely the case.

[51] but then you realize, oh, he's actually a really, really brilliant academic and serious academics take him very seriously.

[52] And then you sort of discover some other aspect.

[53] And then I discovered he hates talking about it, but he was like a world -class diver as a Yeah, he was all -American diver.

[54] As a kid.

[55] I just feel like the further you probe, the more accolades you uncover with him.

[56] Yeah.

[57] He, of course, minimized his diving.

[58] He always minimizes it.

[59] Yeah.

[60] But then did you see he posted some YouTube video of him diving like, you know, two weeks ago?

[61] Oh, no. Yeah.

[62] And it was very impressive.

[63] Yeah.

[64] Because everyone fears that all aging jocks, and I am an aging jock.

[65] Yeah.

[66] We all fear that it's all gone away.

[67] Yeah.

[68] But that was evidence.

[69] The only more impressive one was I was once talking to the dean of the business school at Columbia.

[70] who is a very accomplished, serious Jamaican guy in his, I want to say, late 40s, early 50s.

[71] And then you go on YouTube and you see him dunking on someone.

[72] Oh, my goodness.

[73] Like, as a grown man. Yeah.

[74] Not 18.

[75] In his heyday.

[76] 50 -year -old knees.

[77] Yeah, like just.

[78] And then he pretends it's a great effort and he's like exhausted, but you can tell he could have done it again.

[79] Sure.

[80] Wow.

[81] I feel like you're a jogger, right?

[82] Or not a jogger, you're a runner.

[83] Don't ever.

[84] I'm so sorry.

[85] I'm so sorry.

[86] That was usually...

[87] I mean, that's like, I can't, in the running world, the error you just made is, you get you, that's communicated.

[88] Unforgivable?

[89] It's unforgivable.

[90] I mean, you're lucky I am kindly disposed towards you because that's...

[91] Yes, you are a runner.

[92] You've broken four minutes in the 1500.

[93] I have.

[94] I mean, so long ago that it's a...

[95] Yeah, well, were you 14 or 15 or something?

[96] I would have broken four minutes as like an 18 -year -old.

[97] Okay.

[98] But close to four minutes as a 14 -year -old.

[99] That's incredible.

[100] There is a certain personality type.

[101] Would you agree that is drawn to long distance running?

[102] You mean?

[103] Plotters.

[104] As human beings, they're kind of plotters.

[105] Introverted.

[106] Yeah, you can spend a lot of time with yourself.

[107] Yeah.

[108] Right?

[109] Your own thoughts are a comfortable place to be because you're in them sometimes for, what, six hours or something at a time, these crazy marathon runners?

[110] Well, that's a terrible one.

[111] That's a gift.

[112] For many, for extended periods, you have to be not afraid of your own company if you would like to be a, or any endurance sport requires.

[113] I mean, cyclists are out for a lot longer than runners, but they make it very social.

[114] Right.

[115] Yeah, you're in a pack and you draft people, right, and there's teamwork.

[116] Yeah.

[117] So, but runners, yeah, you're off by yourself for extended periods of time.

[118] And it's not just the solitude.

[119] It's also, I have to imagine, in your head, you're living.

[120] like quit.

[121] No, I'm not going to quit.

[122] No, I'm going to do that.

[123] Like, there's a battle going on.

[124] Is there not to keep pushing yourself?

[125] Well, there is, if you're running flat out, but not really because if you're in serious training, you never push yourself to the point of utter exhaustion.

[126] That's a mistake, right?

[127] You're always stopping shy of that point.

[128] So if you are in a situation where you're seriously weighing whether to quit, you're going too fast.

[129] Right.

[130] Right.

[131] Except in a race, sure, but in training, you should always be capable of doing another repetition or another mile or, right, if you're doing it properly.

[132] Right there might be a little bit different of a mindset, because when I'm jogging and God knows, I can only jog about three miles.

[133] Okay.

[134] And one of the miles, the third mile, is just an absolute court case in my head, whether I should continue on or stop.

[135] It's maddening.

[136] It's a mind game running, for sure.

[137] I think so, too.

[138] But maybe that's what separates, like, real runners and then us.

[139] Joggers.

[140] The lowly joggers.

[141] Is that what you're saying?

[142] I could even call us joggers?

[143] I don't know.

[144] I jog on a treadmill maybe once a week, three miles.

[145] And I mostly lift weights.

[146] Yeah.

[147] Do you ever live?

[148] Oh, thank you for noticing.

[149] I see.

[150] His veins are popping out today.

[151] And he is wearing a rather tight t -shirt.

[152] Of course.

[153] I instead of show it up.

[154] You don't buy a Ferrari and put the car cover on it.

[155] My favorite thing about L .A. is driving down, you know, like ocean, Navajo, whatever it's called in Santa Monica.

[156] There's always the dude with the perfectly cut torso who is jogging, you know, in 45 degrees with his shirt off.

[157] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[158] You're just like, is it, are you really under, in such a hurry to show the world your, that you think you will?

[159] Now, Monica's been with me, and what's interesting is I identify with straight male.

[160] But Monica's been with me, when we see a guy jogging with his shirt off, I am like in an 80s sitcom craning my neck to watch out.

[161] Oh my goodness, Monica, look at his quads and look at his.

[162] I am like, I love that.

[163] No, no, no, no, no, no. I just try to look fine when I take my shirt off on TV.

[164] That's really the whole goal.

[165] And I've said many times, I have no desire to be strong.

[166] I just want to look strong.

[167] Yeah.

[168] You're in a world which places a premium on those kinds of presentations.

[169] I mean, you don't have any choice.

[170] And as much as I fantasize about lifting a car off somebody, it's just never presented itself.

[171] I've never really found that I needed superhuman strength yet, and I'm 44.

[172] So I don't know.

[173] So far, I think I've picked the right lane.

[174] I am most generally interested in why people find their way to the path they did, more than I maybe even am the path they're on.

[175] So you have kind of a unique background that I'm going to theorize gives you a fun perspective on people, Americans in general, specifically, but the fact that you were born in England and then you were raised in Canada and then you've now lived in New York so much.

[176] And then, as you just said, you're out here a lot.

[177] Do you feel like your background has given you in the way that there's a lot of great Canadian comedians?

[178] And I believe it's because they understand us so well, yet they are on the outside.

[179] So they have this great take on us.

[180] They can observe us.

[181] Yeah.

[182] Well, there's another factor about why there's so many Canadian comedians.

[183] And that is that you can get away with things because you're not a threat.

[184] So not only do you have the outsider's perspective, really important.

[185] Things strike you as odd that people who are native to that situation just miss. But more than that, you're from a little tiny country that no one's scared of.

[186] So, like, you can say the most outrageous things and who's possibly going to be threatened by it.

[187] You're right.

[188] So there's freedom that comes with being an outsider.

[189] Yeah, if you were Russian or one of the perceived threats, we probably wouldn't think it was that funny that you were mocking us, right?

[190] Yeah, yeah.

[191] That's true.

[192] Well, yeah, if it was the Cold War and you were, you know, some, yes, exactly, there would be an issue.

[193] I always feel like there should be a general agreement about what the kind of cutoff for insignificant is in country size.

[194] So Canada is, what's Canada, like 32 million or something?

[195] I forgot.

[196] Less or on par with California as a state.

[197] Yeah, there should be like, below a certain point, people should just be like, you can say whatever you want.

[198] If the Dutch say something terrible, I mean, no one's going to get terribly upset because it's the Dutch.

[199] Yeah, some Liechtensteinian comedian says something.

[200] We're like, okay.

[201] But on the other hand, you know, if someone from, you know, if a German says something, Germany is consequential.

[202] Yeah.

[203] You're going to get upset.

[204] So somewhere between the Dutch and the Germans, I feel like there's a line.

[205] I would like to stay on the bottom end of that line.

[206] So it becomes a great asset to have this kind of outside perspective.

[207] But then at the same time, I could imagine.

[208] that also would come with let me first say one of my favorite chapters of yours is on dyslexia because I am dyslexic and I had a horrendous time through K through 5 but then found my way in junior high and then became a good student later but I had grown up with the knowledge that oh yeah you're twice as likely to go to jail if you're or be imprisoned if you're dyslexic but then you revealed you're also twice as likely to be a CEO and I did I get it roughly right but I mean you're you're you're you're you Conceptually, that is correct.

[209] Are the numbers wrong?

[210] You see how it's so nervous.

[211] I know.

[212] It's a curve.

[213] It's like dyslexics are overloaded at the tails of the curve.

[214] Right.

[215] More of them in prison, more of them super high achievers, whereas non -dissexics are a normal bell curve with most of the people in the middle.

[216] And I found that to be very comforting and wonderful as a dyslexic.

[217] And in that story, you articulate, you giggling.

[218] It's just so nervous I am.

[219] No, I'm so happy.

[220] that you're here because you talk about this stuff all the time and you are getting it probably a little wrong.

[221] So I'm so glad we're going to get all the answers this time.

[222] But I think what I interpreted that point was is struggles and coping mechanisms and having to strengthen other aspects can be of great value in your life.

[223] Yeah.

[224] Right.

[225] Challenges.

[226] My friend David Epstein, who wrote this brilliant book called Range, uses the phrase in his book, strategic difficulty.

[227] In David, David and Goliath, I talk about desirable difficulty.

[228] And they're both these similar notions of if it's too hard, it's a problem.

[229] If you have too many problems, you can't get ahead.

[230] And if you have no problems, it's a problem.

[231] Yeah.

[232] Right?

[233] What you want is something that in the course of being challenged the right amount, you're forced to be resourceful.

[234] You will learn things in a more profound way.

[235] You will investigate your own strengths and weaknesses more aggressively.

[236] There's all kinds of good things that happened from.

[237] And I feel like the reason that's such an important point is that a lot of people think that what preparation for excellence is is the removal of difficulty.

[238] Right.

[239] I want to give you the very, very, very best endowed, overly resourced environment imaginable.

[240] Yeah, no obstacles.

[241] You don't want that.

[242] You want to have something that you have to wrestle with.

[243] And I think a lot of parents like myself, we are incredibly privileged.

[244] So we're now in this bizarre situation.

[245] We're like, we're almost trying to manufacture obstacles or challenges for our kids, you know?

[246] My wife and I is having two little kids and we have money and we have time and all those things.

[247] And it's kind of like, oh, I got to figure out like what is, you know, how do I make sure I'm not robbing of them of the opportunity to develop these coping mechanisms and skill sets?

[248] It's kind of challenging.

[249] Yeah.

[250] But where I was going, with it is moving to Canada, what were you six?

[251] Yes.

[252] Went to Canada from England when I was six.

[253] And dad was a mathematics professor and mom was a psychotherapist.

[254] Yeah.

[255] And a writer.

[256] And mom is from Jamaica?

[257] Mom is Jamaican.

[258] Yes.

[259] So again, even within that little bubble, mom has a different perspective probably, right?

[260] Mom has a different perspective.

[261] She does.

[262] Yes, she does.

[263] I'm only laughing because my lovely mother, who is very, very much with us, she does.

[264] She has the benefit of many, many different perspectives, raised in Jamaica, you know, educated in England, married an Englishman, moved to rural Canada.

[265] I mean, and then also there's an age thing that's kind of fascinating.

[266] My mom was born into a house in the middle of nowhere in Jamaica with no electricity, you know, indoor plumbing, no one had a car, and then ends up in...

[267] In the early 40s or late 30s?

[268] My mom was born in 1930.

[269] Okay.

[270] And then ends up in, you know, 24.

[271] first century modern Canada.

[272] And like, I don't think all of us in this room will not see, I doubt, will not see that much technological and social movement in our lifetimes.

[273] Yes, from zero electricity to an iPhone.

[274] Yeah.

[275] Wow.

[276] It's kind of a lot.

[277] It is.

[278] Yeah.

[279] It might be the sweetest spot of that transition.

[280] Of seeing everything.

[281] You know, we're always patting ourselves on the back because we're the generation that will witness the most.

[282] I was like, I don't kind of know.

[283] I sort of think going from no electricity to the iPhone is the most I mean, imagine the perspective someone of her generation has.

[284] On top of all the geographical and cultural movement, this crazy thing of like, you know, growing up with horses and buckies and now taking jets across to Europe kind of thing.

[285] Yes.

[286] And then landing and pulling up your phone and then a car pulls up in front of you and you get in it and go anywhere you want.

[287] I mean, we're really getting...

[288] My mom hasn't gotten to Uber.

[289] Oh, she's not on the Uber train.

[290] She's more of a lift train.

[291] Well, I just mean, more and more, like, we travel a bunch for this show, and I always say, like, we're getting close to teleporting.

[292] I mean, we are really getting close to, like, you wake up somewhere, you know, in the morning and you go to the airport, and then you can really just be anywhere.

[293] And it's, I try to be conscious of it.

[294] Like, it is an incredible accomplishment that we can be anywhere on the globe now.

[295] It's really exciting.

[296] What I find that you point out often, and it seems to be a theme through many of the books, is how bad our intuitive.

[297] is quite often, how counterintuitive results of studies generally are.

[298] And I think you often question a lot of assumed things, which I really like.

[299] And I was trying to think about what causes that?

[300] And I was wondering, do you think us using all this technology that has been amassed over centuries, give us a false sense of our own intelligence?

[301] Like, is that part of the problem?

[302] Because I was an anthropology major, a primatology specific.

[303] That's what I was interested.

[304] And the difference between a chimpanzee's intelligence and ours compared to a chimpanzees and a mouse, it's not that big of a deal.

[305] We're just fractionally smarter than a chimp, right?

[306] But other people have created all this stuff that gives us kind of this bolstered sense of our intelligence.

[307] Is that part of why we think we're so?

[308] We are, I mean, we are massively overconfident.

[309] And a lot of a modern psychology is simply the attempt to catalog the degree to which we are overconfident or over.

[310] overly in awe of our own abilities.

[311] My most recent book, Talking to Strangers, a big chunk of that is trying to dismantle this degree of self -confidence.

[312] It's like, you think that you can sum up a stranger, you know, usefully and accurately in the space of one encounter.

[313] Chances are you can't.

[314] Yes.

[315] You think you can tell a liar, no, you can't.

[316] You, you know, all those oldest sorts of things that we need to be reminded that we're not good at these fundamental social tasks.

[317] Moreover, the proximity to the person actually can be more misleading than space from it.

[318] Like, you cite different examples where the people who met Hitler generally trusted him and the people that never met him face to face were more objective and better at knowing who he was.

[319] Yeah.

[320] What we're really built to do in social interactions as human beings is date.

[321] That's to say, all of our systems are optimized for romantic encounters.

[322] for choosing mates, for figuring out.

[323] But in that realm, we're pretty good.

[324] It is possible to know very quickly whether you're attracted to someone, right?

[325] Yeah.

[326] That's, we have that down.

[327] That's what we've been optimized for.

[328] But when we try and transfer that to non -romantic settings, we get in trouble.

[329] Like, you know, I am constantly amazed by, I think we're in the middle of, you know, the process of choosing our presidential candidates.

[330] The mythology that surrounds choosing presidential candidates is the mythology of dating.

[331] It's really, when you think about it, people fall in this trap of saying, well, I want this person, why?

[332] Because what they're effectively saying is that's the person I would date.

[333] Right.

[334] And you realize you're not dating the president.

[335] In fact, if you were, you don't imagine a more perfect selection process, it would be one in which you never met any of the candidates.

[336] It is not useful to know that Pete Buttigieg is 5 -8, to know that Elizabeth Warren is a woman, to know that Joe Biden is, you know, 80 years old or however old he is, none of these facts really help you.

[337] I mean, just because someone's 80 doesn't mean that they are more or less impaired than someone who's 70 or 60.

[338] I mean, you can be...

[339] Well, there's a wide range, right, of 80 -year -olds.

[340] And the fact that if you look at the history of American presidential candidates, I did this once in super obvious analysis, if you go back 100 years, every single person who has ever run for president with four exceptions has been a middle -aged white Protestant male over six feet in height.

[341] Right.

[342] There are four exceptions in the last 100 years.

[343] Jimmy Carter was short.

[344] John F. Kennedy was Catholic.

[345] Barack Obama was black and Hillary Clinton was woman.

[346] Everybody else was the same thing.

[347] Why do we keep choosing from the same incredibly narrow?

[348] Because we can see them.

[349] You know, we want to date the tall, tall, Yeah, confident, white -haired guy, right?

[350] And then I tried to figure out what percentage of the American population is a tall white male, tall Protestant guy.

[351] And it's like, it's less than 10%.

[352] So we're choosing the most important job in the world from 10 % of the population.

[353] Well, and you made the point brilliantly.

[354] I can't even remember which book.

[355] But starting to audition orchestra players by a blind audition, right, a sheet between the musician and the people judging them and how much that changed the outcome in auditioning.

[356] So similarly, like, the music they're playing has nothing to do with what they look like, nor does the president's ability to guide the nation or set policy have anything to do with what they look like.

[357] Yeah.

[358] But it's tempting.

[359] That's a little more subjective than music playing.

[360] You know, like.

[361] I don't know enough about music.

[362] But yeah, I guess you're right.

[363] Kristen knows if something's correct or not.

[364] Yeah, you're hearing whether something sounds good.

[365] or not.

[366] But what policies people want to push through or what they care about is more subjective, I would say.

[367] But it still leaves the question wide open of whether that subjective judgment you're making is helped or hurt by being able to look at the person.

[368] Right.

[369] Totally.

[370] Yeah.

[371] I'm not convinced it is.

[372] I think it's just making an already subjective decision hopelessly subjective.

[373] If you're getting confused over the fact that someone's good looking and it's really useful to go back.

[374] four years to the last presidential campaign and read through a mainstream publication, like pick 100 newspaper articles from the New York Times about Hillary Clinton at random between 2015 and 2016 during the race for the nomination and the presidential campaign.

[375] And look at how many references there are to the way she looks or to some extraneous fact about the fact that she's a woman, the, you know, some, and you realize, what if we didn't know what she looked like or that she was a woman?

[376] How much easier and clearer would our choice have been?

[377] We wrapped ourselves in knots talking about her hairstyle.

[378] They were articles about her hairstyle.

[379] Oh, sure, sure, sure.

[380] Pantsuits.

[381] Power suits.

[382] Yeah.

[383] Well, in talking to strangers, and let me first say, I prefer to read your books, even though I'm a big consumer of audiobooks.

[384] I love listening to them at night as I fall asleep.

[385] But your books I'd like to read with my eye because I feel like I retain more of it and I'm constantly citing it incorrectly as we're learning today.

[386] But I would urge people.

[387] Someone urged me like, hey, I know you want to read it, but try the audio book, which I've gotten.

[388] And it's so fun to listen to because, and I don't know why, well, you're the first person I'm aware of that's done this.

[389] So anytime that you're going to quote somebody in the book and the audio actually exists of the person, you'll play the audio during the audiobook, or if there is the traffic stop where someone gets shot and there's dashboard footage, we'll hear it.

[390] And it becomes this kind of multimedia experience.

[391] And it's profoundly more enjoyable than just hearing someone read the book.

[392] So first and foremost, I love it.

[393] Yeah, we licensed a song from Janelle Manet.

[394] That's the theme song and we had scoring and we had.

[395] And the result is until very recently, I was selling more audio books than physical books.

[396] Now, normally, it's like 10 % audiobooks of the overall.

[397] I'm at around 50 %.

[398] Wow.

[399] Which is unheard of.

[400] I mean, it's like, it's so it's like, it's this crazy new thing that I really made an audiobook.

[401] Yeah.

[402] Prior to this one coming out, what had been your, I just assume as an author who sits down and types on a keyboard, you kind of want that red with the eyes.

[403] Do you have any, you know, actually, this would rather people listen.

[404] No, yeah, well, I agree.

[405] I agree.

[406] Because you guys have done such, it's so well produced and it just, it's so much more engaging to hear the people you're talking about.

[407] Like your own limits of empathy, me hearing you talk versus hearing the woman during the traffic stop is, it's night and day.

[408] There's so many good examples, but there's one, there's a chapter, the chapter where I talk about torture and I'm interviewing the guy from the CIA who did the waterboarding.

[409] Oh.

[410] It's really important to hear him.

[411] So I'm not paraphrasing him or just quoting him.

[412] You hear him in his voice, at his own pace, described to you what happened.

[413] And I think that's really crucial because it would be very easy for me to caricature his position or in some way to slant it or it's like, no, no, no, I would like the reader, the listener, the whatever, the audience.

[414] Consumer.

[415] To get a clean impression of this guy's because I think he made some, I ultimately do not agree with his position, but I don't dismiss him either.

[416] I have an enormous amount of respect for someone who tried to serve his country as faithful as he could.

[417] He ended up doing things I, like I said, I would disagree with, but I don't do not in any way doubt his, the sincerity of his intentions.

[418] It is really important as a listener that you hear it in his words, in his voice.

[419] You detail a situation where judges who are evaluating whether or not to grant bail to people or set bail or who they're going to let out and who they're going to.

[420] going to put behind bars.

[421] And you say that they created an AI algorithm that evaluated all these cases that these judges had done.

[422] And that in general, they were 25 % better at predicting who wouldn't commit a crime or who would be a good person to not.

[423] The algorithm.

[424] The algorithm was better than the judge.

[425] Yes.

[426] The superior by 25%, which is very significant, right?

[427] I think in a Jonathan height way, I really believe that we as individuals are just terribly unobjective, but that we do create systems that are pretty darn objective or significantly more objective than us.

[428] And so I have this kind of belief in systems and I have some, I'm scared about just humans making decisions.

[429] So this AI thing is interesting in that we are nearing a time when we could probably deploy AI as judging that kind of thing.

[430] And all kinds of things.

[431] You see these AI stories in medicine that they're better at identifying cancer and whatnot.

[432] Now here's my question.

[433] Because you love challenging systems so much, and I'm drawn to that.

[434] as well.

[435] I invite AI making those decisions.

[436] But do you think having AI make these decisions for us could lead to us not challenging anymore, breaking paradigms, pushing things forward?

[437] Because we're just offloading or outsourcing that thinking.

[438] And we would just shut off altogether our evaluation of that, how good the system is.

[439] Yeah, I'm not a someone who thinks we should turn over enormous chunks of our crucial decisions to machines.

[440] To the contrary, I think that would be disastrous.

[441] The point of that chapter in talking to strangers was not to celebrate how good the algorithm was at deciding which defendants deserve bail.

[442] It was to point how bad the human judges are.

[443] So algorithms have all kinds of other problems.

[444] Let's just be clear.

[445] But what's important to note here simply is that a judge unaided by any kind of tool who is asked to make a high -stakes decision about how dangerous a defendant is, you know, in a bail hearing, in 10 seconds, does not do a good job.

[446] That's what I wanted to prove.

[447] And so someone who is trained and whose job it is to size up strangers does a terrible job of sizing up strangers.

[448] What that says to me is not we should throw out the human and replace them with a computer.

[449] It says that we have to get better as humans.

[450] Right.

[451] Machines cannot make consequential decisions about whether people deserve their freedom or not, that's crazy, right?

[452] The only way we'll accept the legitimacy of the legal system is if those high -stakes decisions are made by human beings.

[453] So there are two competing things here.

[454] There is accuracy and legitimacy.

[455] They are not the same.

[456] Accuracy and legitimacy are not the same thing.

[457] They are not the same.

[458] So my willingness to accept the judgment of some institution is based on two factors.

[459] One is how accurate are they in rendering judgments?

[460] Do they appropriately tag the guilty and appropriately tagged the innocent?

[461] And secondly, how much credibility do they have?

[462] Are they people who I believe in?

[463] Right?

[464] Yeah.

[465] As a kid, I would respond to scolding from my mother.

[466] I would not respond to scolding from a stranger in the street.

[467] Even if the stranger in the street was correct, right?

[468] The stranger in the street has no credibility.

[469] They have no standing in my life.

[470] Why would I do what they say?

[471] My mom has enormous credibility, even when she's wrong.

[472] I would submit to her authority because she's my mom, right?

[473] So that's credibility over accuracy.

[474] So the judge has all the credibility.

[475] The AI has the accuracy.

[476] The answer is to combine them.

[477] Yeah.

[478] To train and help judges to use these tools to improve the accuracy of their decisions while maintaining their human credibility.

[479] That is the solution.

[480] When we discuss these things, there's just way too much either or.

[481] Well, that's what I was going to say that I'd love most about your books, which I feel like they are always investigating on some level, which is all these things that we would love to be binary are just simply not binary.

[482] And so often we're pursuing two conflicting ideals that at best will be some compromise or some position on the pendulum, right, that we all feel good about.

[483] When I say I believe in systems, the thing that I think you detailed so perfectly is the Korean Air example, which is probably my favorite chapter.

[484] in your book all the time all the time we talk about it just the notion that this pilot co -pilot relationship how effective it is at preventing disaster and how much culture plays a role in the dynamic in between that relationship see to me that's an example of a really great system that has been devised and when you detail how they were able to go into creonair change the culture change how it works and get this amazing outcome.

[485] That gives me so much hope for humans.

[486] There's so many things you could get discouraged about.

[487] But taking a system that complex where they've had five disasters in the air and they're about to lose their right to fly through Canada, all this stuff couldn't be a worse scenario.

[488] That people went in there and actually figured out what was broken and fixed it, I just find hugely encouraging for us as little monkeys.

[489] Yeah.

[490] Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

[491] if you dare What's up guys This your girl Kiki And my podcast is back With a new season And let me tell you It's too good And I'm diving into the brains Of entertainment's best and brightest Okay, every episode I bring on a friend And I don't mean just friends I mean the likes of Amy Polar Kelle Mitchell, Vivica Fox The list goes on So follow, watch and listen to baby This is Kiki Palmer On the Wondery app Or wherever you get your podcast We've all been there.

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[500] That chapter was, was, that was in Outliers, I think.

[501] It was profoundly encouraging.

[502] What was interesting about it is that normally when we talk about culture, we think of it as something that's kind of immutable.

[503] And then after we talk about, oh, that difference is cultural, we shrug and we, it's in the assumption that you can never do anything about it.

[504] Right, like throwing them in the towel.

[505] Yeah.

[506] And I'm dissing someone by pointing out what a culture does badly.

[507] What I'm basically doing is asserting my own superiority.

[508] Actually, no, cultures are not immutable.

[509] And different cultures have different strengths.

[510] and they can learn from each other.

[511] Yes.

[512] Right, that's the kind of, in that sense, the Koreans learned from Western notions of power distance in a very, very useful way.

[513] And by the way, the correct response to that story is to turn around and say, okay, now what can we learn from the Korean kind of suite of cultural traits?

[514] Because they have an awful lot to teach us as well.

[515] I mean, the most heartbreaking one, right, is the Brazilian pilots who are circling JFK and they're running out of gas.

[516] Columbia, yeah.

[517] Oh, it's Columbia.

[518] Yeah.

[519] They're running out of fuel.

[520] They keep saying in these mitigated ways that they're running out of fuel.

[521] And the air traffic controllers are New Yorkers.

[522] They're like pretty balsy.

[523] And they're just not really listening.

[524] They're not.

[525] And then the Colombians aren't just stating, hey, we got to land now.

[526] And then you parallel that with all that IBM data that you can rank people and how fearful they are of authority.

[527] Am I getting that correctly?

[528] Yes.

[529] How respectful of authority.

[530] Yes.

[531] And then you just start plotting these things on a graph.

[532] And they're almost just perfectly correlated, whether they're going to, a stand up, you know, that would be, that's a great time for culture to be implemented in an airplane cockpit.

[533] But then obviously there has to be some converse thing where people that are afraid of authority, they must have some other benefit that there are sections of our lives we could use to adapt, right?

[534] There has to be some upside of their.

[535] Oh, yeah.

[536] I mean, my favorite example, I have a really good friend who's Israeli.

[537] Israel is famously, it has the lowest power distance score, I think, in the world.

[538] In other words, The Israelis have the least respect for authority and hierarchy of any...

[539] More than us.

[540] Oh, way more.

[541] Oh, wow.

[542] I didn't think that was possible.

[543] No, it's Israelis, Australians, and I think Germans are really low or Dutch.

[544] There's some Northern Europeans who are really, really low on that, as opposed to, you know, Columbia would be very, very high.

[545] Mexico, very, very high.

[546] Some of the Arab countries would be very high.

[547] Anyway, she was describing this.

[548] friend of hers, Israeli friend of hers, who comes to America and comes to a four -way stop sign, no part of the four -way stop sign makes any sense to him.

[549] He's like, I don't understand.

[550] People willingly stop and see the right of way to somebody else just because that person got there first.

[551] He's like, this makes no sense whatsoever to me. She was like, it was the most hilarious.

[552] She went on and on.

[553] She tried and failed to explain this concept.

[554] Because if you have, you have no kind of regard.

[555] regard for hierarchy, if that's not part of your cultural mindset, before we stop signing it, is a seriously complex, mind -blowing experience.

[556] Because it's a hierarchy that is established in the moment, just on the basis of who got there first.

[557] Another hilarious Israeli story, I love Israeli stories, I collect them.

[558] You know, normally they would have these platoons who are going on these night patrols in sort of disputed territory.

[559] And it's at night.

[560] So they're trying to be quiet because they're like, you know, hunting for all kinds of bad guys.

[561] In a normal army, you're not a problem because you have someone who's in command of the platoon and he says to everyone else, be quiet.

[562] And because that person is the boss, everyone's quiet.

[563] Well, these, in these Israelis, these are like 50 of them, you know, the private marching at the back, it doesn't, you know, he doesn't go concept of a hierarchy.

[564] So he's like chattering away and like in the middle of the night and the dogs are barking and the numbers are blown.

[565] Like, it's just those kind of really obvious things we take for granted in hierarchical societies are very difficult in countries where it's, at the same time, why is Israel one of the most entrepreneurial countries on Earth precisely for this reason?

[566] Yeah.

[567] Right?

[568] No one's waiting around for an opportunity to come to them or for the boss to give them the green light.

[569] They're just, I mean, the result is this extraordinary flourishing of creativity.

[570] I feel like I was born to be Israeli.

[571] Well, he said Germans and you love Germans.

[572] Oh, well, that too.

[573] Which do you think the levels of power distance have to do, if it's culture, like with Germans, they've had some bad authority situations.

[574] So maybe they're learned to like, that actually doesn't, that actually clearly doesn't mean what people want it to mean.

[575] Yeah.

[576] And that respect kind of dwindles.

[577] I think it's probably part of that.

[578] I mean, part of that might be a reaction.

[579] But also it's a function of something that's.

[580] quite separate from their history, which is just their social structure, that these are countries with very, very low economic inequality.

[581] I was going to say in Germany in particular, like the laborers are very empowered and they even, I worked for General Motors for 14 years and we would have car shows where Opel, the division of General Motors, would come over here.

[582] And I would watch how they treated their technicians versus how we treated our technicians.

[583] And their technicians were treated with the same esteem as the engineers were, which is just on heard of here in the U .S. It's like the engineers are geniuses, whatever they say.

[584] The technician should just execute and never question.

[585] So interesting.

[586] I built a house, the house I live and we got these windows.

[587] I mean, they want super fancy windows, but the windows came from Germany.

[588] So just bought windows, the same way you would buy windows from like Marvin or Pella or something.

[589] Yeah.

[590] But every like two years, some guy from Germany shows up to like check in on the windows.

[591] And he's not, he's not some fancy senior, he's literally a guy from some small town in the Rue Valley who shows, who comes on a tour of everyone in, you know, the northeast who has the windows.

[592] And I just like, it's so German, like, you know, he's like a mid -level guy who has given this responsibility to check in on every, every customer of this.

[593] But like that, it's true, that kind of, that's very, very true of German culture.

[594] It's a really, and even I think about something we could learn from in this country.

[595] Yes.

[596] Can we do a minor digression on cars?

[597] Yes.

[598] I'm a massive car guy.

[599] Oh, you are?

[600] You don't know?

[601] No. Oh, my goodness.

[602] The first thing I read every morning are like, you know, car sites, car blocks.

[603] Really?

[604] Bring a trailer.

[605] Oh, I love bring a trailer.

[606] Do you like jalapnik?

[607] I read a little bit jalapnik.

[608] I like the car and driver's site, the car magazine site.

[609] Yes.

[610] I had no idea.

[611] This is so exciting.

[612] I own all kinds of cars.

[613] What's your taste?

[614] Is it weird and eclectic like you're presenting self?

[615] No, no, it's quite, I have a, you know, a Volkswagen Golf R. Okay.

[616] I have a 2003 BMWM -5.

[617] Oh, lovely.

[618] 1973 Mercedes 280.

[619] Ooh.

[620] And a Boxster GTS.

[621] Oh, wonderful.

[622] Yeah, I have some automobiles.

[623] This is, why do I find this incongruous?

[624] I'm trying to.

[625] I like it.

[626] I love it.

[627] I guess you're just so cerebral, I think, of you.

[628] Always, as a kid, I was.

[629] so obsessed with cars, I decided in 19, late 70s or early 80s, I decided I would collect a brochure on every car made in the world.

[630] And I succeeded with one, I still have them all, with one exception, the Russians made a car called a Zill.

[631] I did not get a brochure for a Zill.

[632] Well, they don't need brochures because they're not really advertising them, right?

[633] But I had everything else.

[634] No kidding.

[635] Yeah, I have.

[636] In what model year was this?

[637] I think it's 79 maybe 79 terrible year to be collecting brochure no low point in American automotive no no but the cars of the 70s were badly made but they were beautiful give me an example of one you love from 79 and the 9 -11s of that era are gorgeous that's true absolutely gorgeous you know there's a lot of yeah the 308 Ferraris were really cool those have aged well I have no time for Ferraris but why do you suppose it's too to ostentatious The idea of a perfect car is my Volkswagen Golf R. That's the perfect car.

[638] It's like a $35 ,000 car that drives like something twice as expensive.

[639] Totally stealth.

[640] You don't know it's this serious hot rod.

[641] It's a rocket.

[642] And if people drive it with it, I don't tell them, I just, oh, why don't you take the golf?

[643] And they get it and they're like, whoa.

[644] They're like, take off and some.

[645] Yeah.

[646] Well, I'm mostly, as you just observed outside, I love sleepers.

[647] Yeah.

[648] So that has the LSA motor out of a CTSV.

[649] It has a supercharged 6 .2 liter V8 that's 700 horse.

[650] Stuff that in that road faster?

[651] Yeah, it's 700 horsepower at the wheels.

[652] And it has huge willwood brakes, coil over suspension.

[653] Nobody knows that.

[654] If I pull up next to you in your boxer, guess what?

[655] I'm going to get the best to you zero to 60 in my wood grain station wagon.

[656] You can't take me. Absolutely.

[657] Absolutely.

[658] I bet my children's life on it.

[659] You're gone, Malcolm.

[660] I'm looking at you in my rear view mirror.

[661] I'll tell you what car we just beat with the whole family in it that my wife was laughing hysterically, and I was like, I picked the right partner.

[662] We pulled up next to a brand new Mercedes G -T -A -M -G.

[663] You know, the little two -seater, it's beautiful.

[664] Wait, you took that off the line?

[665] We were, Malcolm, I promise you, we were dead fucking even for about a half mile.

[666] And then just slowly started creeping ahead of me. And the guy was laughing hysterically who was driving.

[667] And we were all in there with the kids.

[668] It was a highlight.

[669] You're like, we are so off topic.

[670] Monica, feel free to weigh it.

[671] I know nothing about cars.

[672] What are you driving?

[673] I drive a Prius C. She found a car, though.

[674] I've been dying to get her to fall in love with the car.

[675] She's like, I don't like cars.

[676] I don't care.

[677] But she loves the 300 S .L. Mercedes, the Gold Wing.

[678] She discovered this car.

[679] I saw it on comedians and cars.

[680] Getting coffee.

[681] That's where my knowledge comes from.

[682] And I thought it was really pretty.

[683] Oh, it's beautiful.

[684] You might want to save a little bit.

[685] It's a few million bucks.

[686] It's going to be a couple million.

[687] That's generally my taste, something I can't afford.

[688] Now, one thing I learned about you all reading about you today, you were very, very driven as a child, right?

[689] And your father was a professor in Canada, and you had access.

[690] And he would let you roam freely and just read and tear around the university, right?

[691] So this is a little bit like your example of Bill Gates being conveniently born next to a library that has a mainframe when no one else has a mainframe.

[692] Yeah, yeah.

[693] So this is a unique situation you found yourself in.

[694] Yes, I guess so.

[695] It's funny because I was thinking about this.

[696] One of the reasons I'm out in L .A. is that I interviewed for our music podcast, flee from the chili peppers.

[697] Oh, yeah.

[698] And because he has this really lovely book out.

[699] And the book is all about growing up in East Hollywood, or Hollywood of the 70s.

[700] And how he was essentially unparented.

[701] And from the age of 11 on was just roaming the streets of 1970s.

[702] Hollywood, of course, 1970s Hollywood.

[703] It was nothing like today.

[704] It was like...

[705] The nadir of...

[706] It's crazy time.

[707] I mean, it's like every degree, every kind of madness that's going on in the streets.

[708] And he is a kid, these little kid.

[709] The first half of it is just about what it was like to be a 12 -year -old, essentially roaming without supervision in, you know, in...

[710] Prostitute -laden, heroin.

[711] So when you were talking, you know, let's be clear compared to flee, that I was allowed to roam in the library of a university.

[712] Yes, yes.

[713] I'm in the, you know, the H .M. 301 section of the fifth of the library, yeah.

[714] But a very unique pursuit for someone of that age.

[715] Would you agree to that?

[716] A lot of my 11 and 12 and 13 -year -old friends, their daydream of the perfect afternoon was not, you know, walking the halls of a library.

[717] It's true.

[718] It is a little unusual.

[719] I grew increasingly uninterested in school, the institution, but increasingly interested in learning.

[720] It didn't seem to me that learning either exclusively or even preferentially took place at a school.

[721] Rather, it seemed to be far more efficient to do it on your own or to go someplace where there were tons and tons of great books.

[722] My parents, to their great credit, it got to the point where my mom would write me fake notes to get out of school.

[723] Or she would give me notes and she would leave the date blank.

[724] And she could just give me a stack and I was still in the date.

[725] Oh, wow.

[726] She was so complicit in my kind of absenteeism because she knew that what I was really doing was I wasn't like Flea.

[727] Right, right, right.

[728] I was actually probably in the library or at home reading something, you know.

[729] And they had a friend.

[730] It's funny, if I can continue with the Flea comparisons.

[731] You know, Flea describes meeting Anthony Keatis as I think he's in high school.

[732] They're like 14 or 15.

[733] and he talked about how the minute they met, and this is the relationship that will define the rest of their life, that it's not that he did things with Anthony at that age that he wouldn't have done by himself.

[734] It's that the combination of them was sort of on steroids.

[735] Yeah, yeah.

[736] And he was like this electric thing where the two of them have this connection from the moment they lay eyes.

[737] It's like this insane love story.

[738] Yeah.

[739] And they just feed on each other and give each other permission to explore and be ever more adventurous.

[740] And that's how you get the music of the chili peppers less than 10 years later.

[741] Six years later, the beginnings of this extraordinary creative partnership.

[742] And kind of counter to your 10 ,000 -hour rule, not to point that out.

[743] But unlike the Beatles who went and practiced in Germany, this is almost the opposite.

[744] Although they played a lot of music before they got to that point.

[745] But you're right.

[746] I don't think it's a good example of that phenomenon.

[747] But I had the same thing.

[748] I met a guy named Terry Martin when I was 14 or 13 in a chemistry class.

[749] And it's my version of Anthony Kedis.

[750] He was this, you know, both his parents at that point hadn't gone, even graduated from high school.

[751] He just had this pure, more than pure intelligence.

[752] He had this sense of adventure.

[753] He would explore any idea under any circumstances at the drop of a hat.

[754] And he had no fear of ideas.

[755] And I had never met anyone with that.

[756] I mean, it was like, it's so funny, but I was a reading fleece thing.

[757] I was like, this is my Anthony Kedis.

[758] Do you know, as you're saying it, I'm almost crying, and I've talked about it on here a bunch, but mine's Aaron Weekly.

[759] I met this kid when I was 12 years old, and I'm not a comedian if I don't meet this kid.

[760] We gave each other permission, and we, all I cared about was his approval, and everyone else just fell to the wayside, and if I was making Aaron laugh, I was in heaven, and we just built this almost shared identity that ends with me here.

[761] I am not here without that person.

[762] And I never have advice for people.

[763] But if I have a single piece of advice, it's like, find that person when you're young.

[764] Find the person that gives you permission to be you and that you can give permission to them to be them.

[765] I remember, like, Terry and I and his cousin would play endless games of risk and monopoly.

[766] And the minute he said it, it just made such perfect sense.

[767] It never occurred to him that the rules that you were given, you had any obligation to follow.

[768] In other words, you couldn't.

[769] And we're playing Monopoly on the board with the pieces and the things, but we can totally make up all of our own rules from scratch.

[770] And every time we play, if we want to, we can play it in a different way.

[771] He's just an iconoclass.

[772] He was just a kind of fabulous, brilliant.

[773] And not to get too saccharine, right, but you must question you don't meet him.

[774] You're probably on a different trajectory, right?

[775] I am not here if I don't know.

[776] Yeah, isn't that?

[777] There's no, I'm doing something far more conventional.

[778] Yeah, and that's the like intangible thing of life where it's like there's a, all this preparation.

[779] You have a skill set and you have an aptitude.

[780] But then the luck intervenes and you meet your soulmate.

[781] Wait, what happened to Aaron Weekly?

[782] He's still my best friend and I love him so much.

[783] Is he, is yours in your life?

[784] Terry is a tender professor of history at Harvard University.

[785] No way.

[786] We should have Terry on too.

[787] He's so smart.

[788] And what's his field?

[789] That's awesome.

[790] Soviet history.

[791] Soviet history.

[792] You might think books that are hundreds and hundreds of pages long and years in the making.

[793] I mean, he's a very, very, very, very serious.

[794] scholar.

[795] It's funny because what I took from him was his sense of mischief, which he's no longer mischievous.

[796] Yeah.

[797] He's profound.

[798] Well, he's the fucking institution now.

[799] It's like I stole his soul and maybe he stole mine.

[800] Yeah, you traded.

[801] We said traded.

[802] That's one of the things I think why I'm so drawn to you as a writer is I just feel like since I can remember, always looking around and going, huh, everyone's agreed to do this this way, but is anyone questioning why?

[803] Like, Like, are all these rules, are they divine?

[804] You know, like, I've always been obsessed with which of these rules should I be following?

[805] And which one should I ignore?

[806] And I don't know if I'm unique in that or whatever, but I just, every time I read you, I think, yes, here's somebody who would take the most basic premise we all ascribe to and question it.

[807] I also want to point out for people, because I think it's really encouraging.

[808] You were kind of a shitty student, right?

[809] Like you got out of University of Toronto and you couldn't get into grad school.

[810] Is that story apocryphal or real?

[811] Shitty is too strong.

[812] I mean, I never went to class.

[813] Okay.

[814] Well, I would say that's a shitty student who doesn't attend.

[815] But I didn't do badly in the courses that I cared about.

[816] Okay.

[817] So I once again, I didn't go to university to sit in a lecture hall and listen to somebody.

[818] That's not my definition of university.

[819] My definition was going to the library and doing stuff on my own and then talking about it with friends.

[820] Well, I wanted the kind of social experience of learning and the, access to all those resources, but I wasn't there to listen.

[821] I'm trying to be listening.

[822] To this day, the notion I'm going and listening to someone talk is just not my cup of tea.

[823] I can't sit still.

[824] See, now me, as a dyslexic who couldn't get anything from the written word, I love people telling me stuff.

[825] Like, I love it.

[826] It's like my, I can retain so much from listening to somebody more than, say, reading often.

[827] So I have such a different relationship with it, but you kind of already answered my question, but I was just wondering if, being that driven and focused at such a young age, was that isolating at all?

[828] I have an armchair theory that maybe your desire to challenge the status quo could have been because you're observing a status quo that didn't include you and you got critical of it.

[829] Oh.

[830] I mean, this is like a very cheap psychological.

[831] No, no, no, no. See, interesting.

[832] Never thought about this before.

[833] It's funny, I suppose, formally I was something of an, not an outsider, but a kind of, I mean, when I went to college, I was two years younger than my peer group.

[834] Well, you graduated early.

[835] Yeah.

[836] So, you know, Canada has 13 years of, in those years, 13 years of high school.

[837] So I was 16 and my peers were 18.

[838] Now, the difference in 16 and 18 is enormous, right?

[839] It's not the difference between 21 and 23.

[840] Yeah.

[841] So in that sense, I did feel, I suppose, a little bit on the outside for social reasons.

[842] But I wasn't sort of aware.

[843] I never felt that I was isolated.

[844] Some people clearly have that kind of chip on their shoulder or that perspective is, you know, on the outside looking in.

[845] And maybe it was because I was a, that's one of the gifts of being an athlete.

[846] If you had asked me at 14, 15, what I was, I would have said I was a runner.

[847] Right.

[848] Or a jogger.

[849] Right, that's an identity as a young age.

[850] Yeah, yeah.

[851] And that was sufficient for me. Yeah.

[852] Do you think if you subtract that?

[853] It's a very different story.

[854] It's a different story, right?

[855] Yeah, I think, I think it's so interesting in retrospect to look back from adulthood at how enormously central sports are, this thing, particularly like when you think that there's nothing at stake, like, 0 .001 % of people who do.

[856] sports in high school go on to make a living out of it.

[857] Right.

[858] Right.

[859] In 99 % of cases, you don't even keep doing it past incidental window.

[860] Like my window as a serious runner was four years.

[861] You know, it's like it's a tiny fraction of my life.

[862] I mean, I still run now, but not.

[863] I don't race in the way I did back then.

[864] I don't self -identify as a runner.

[865] But this little four -year window of activity had this lasting imprint.

[866] One 25th of your life, probably.

[867] Yeah.

[868] Yeah.

[869] In a perfect world.

[870] Yes.

[871] Well, you're going to make it to 100.

[872] You're lean.

[873] You're smart.

[874] These are all, these are all right.

[875] Useful predictors.

[876] I think they're pretty useful.

[877] Okay.

[878] How do you curate the stories that support your thesis in your book?

[879] Do you find interesting stories along the way and earmark them and then later try to place them in?

[880] Or do you go out with your thesis and come across them?

[881] Like, how can you draw from such different periods and topics?

[882] Like as I'm reading the current one, all of a sudden we're in Montezuma and Cortez's story.

[883] So I'm just curious, how did these drastically different, you know, they seem off topic, but they find their way into supporting your thesis.

[884] Was it a chicken or an egg?

[885] It's changed.

[886] Ever since I started doing revisionist history in my podcast.

[887] Which is spectacular, by the way.

[888] Our favorite one is the token on Sammy Davis.

[889] Oh, my God.

[890] I can remember where on the road I was when I heard the audio of the roast.

[891] I mean, it's so heartbreaking.

[892] It's crazy.

[893] I haven't heard this one, but the one you did on memory, people talk about nonstop.

[894] I wrongly was talking about it the other day thinking it was about this book.

[895] Troy was talking about it the other day, too.

[896] Yeah.

[897] Like, I've just heard so many people reference that episode.

[898] Brian Williams.

[899] Yes.

[900] Yeah.

[901] Well, those are two good examples of, so the Sammy Davis Jr. one does not begin with an idea.

[902] It begins with my friend Charles, Charles Randolph.

[903] Do you know him, his screenwriter?

[904] No. Did The Big Short.

[905] Oh, we love that.

[906] And the new movie that's coming up, bombshell.

[907] I'm dying to see that.

[908] It's so good, by the way.

[909] Oh.

[910] It is phenomenal.

[911] Nicole Kidman, Charlie's Theron, Margot Robbie, Kate McKinnon.

[912] Oh, boy.

[913] Oh, boy, boy, boy, boy.

[914] Smoke show, smoke show.

[915] With like a script that's so dense and brilliant.

[916] Anyway, Charles is one of my best friends.

[917] Charles is one of those people who never has an uninteresting thought.

[918] So I literally will go out to do it.

[919] I will go to dinner with him.

[920] I've known him for like 20 years.

[921] And I take paper and pen.

[922] And like when he's not looking, I like scribbled out.

[923] So Charles just one day says you, you have to listen to this roast.

[924] Oh, so that was the first piece.

[925] Oh, yeah.

[926] He says, he's unbelievable.

[927] And like, you know, and he has his own theory about it.

[928] And I listen to this thing.

[929] I was like, I have to do something with it.

[930] I don't know what it is.

[931] And so I listen to it and listen to it and think about and think, well, what is the story here?

[932] There's got to be, because in all of those episodes of Revision history, you tell a story, but there's always a deeper point that I'm trying to make.

[933] And so that's examples of you start with the story, and the story appeals to you on some emotional level, and it has its own inherent power.

[934] And what I want to do is give you a reason to listen to it even more closely.

[935] That's the point.

[936] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[937] And this book has written, this was the first book, Talking to Strangers, written since I started doing the podcast.

[938] And it was written in a very different way than my previous books, because in all of the chapters, I start with the story.

[939] The book is framed around the story of Sandra Bland, one of the most high profile of those, of the cases that began with Ferguson.

[940] I just heard about that case and watched the dash cam video of the whole incident of her arguing with the police officer.

[941] And I was like, this is about what I'm talking about, right?

[942] This is what I wanted to extract from it.

[943] I didn't know.

[944] I just knew that I wanted to tell a story about what happened by the side of the road when this cop pulls over this young black woman and things go awry right and then the story you mentioned about the Cuban spy I don't know how I ran across that story a long time ago it was just something about it that was so awesome kind of unbelievable that this woman was the highest levels of the American intelligence is dating or dating a you know an FBI agent and she's a spy the whole time for Castro and nobody knows and she has a fucking Shakespearean quote on on her at her desk basically saying I'm a double agent.

[945] I'm a double agent.

[946] But those, and then I began to realize, oh, those are, it's sort of the same story.

[947] It's about our inability to comprehend straight.

[948] So in that case, you were aware of it, and you're like, this has some significance somewhere.

[949] And the more pieces I start adding, the more stories I see, oh, they fit.

[950] And I can tell a series of what I wanted to do is just to tell.

[951] Do you have a wall?

[952] Do you write it like a, like you would write a college paper?

[953] Is there like a whiteboard?

[954] How are you managing these stories?

[955] I'm writing chapters, different chapters.

[956] Sometimes I'm not sure where they go.

[957] And I assemble them over time.

[958] But I'm going to go back and revisit, you know, and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.

[959] But they kind of fall together.

[960] Like the Montezuma story is out at the very end.

[961] Oh, okay.

[962] When a friend of mine read the book and just said, well, where does this begin?

[963] We're just, what is the first great talking to stranger's story?

[964] And of course, the first great talking to stranger story is Cortez.

[965] meeting Montezuma in Mexico.

[966] And in a nutshell, Monica, just he points out that if you look at the, the wars that happened in the 1300s, 1400s, it's largely neighbors fighting neighbors.

[967] And then all of a sudden you have this.

[968] Cortez, a Spaniard goes to, first Westerner to go to Mexico, meets the Aztec king, and they have this conversation and they have no idea.

[969] They're working through so many layers of translators.

[970] They have no idea what they're saying.

[971] And they completely misunderstand each other.

[972] Cortez gets Montezuma 100 % wrong.

[973] And it ends in one of the great tragedies.

[974] Genocides.

[975] Wow.

[976] Now, do you get the same, I sense that you get the same level of frustration when you see a problem presented to the public in the two options, you recognize immediately.

[977] That's not getting to the source of this problem.

[978] And we're going to expend money, time, resources, chasing two avenues that are not far enough upstream to fix this problem.

[979] I find that uniquely maddening when I observe problems being.

[980] So here's one that I've been thinking about, and I might do an episode of revisionist history on it.

[981] So my brother is a elementary school principal in Canada, Ontario.

[982] And every year he goes down to the big international principals conference.

[983] It's all over North America.

[984] And he always comes back and he says, it was so weird.

[985] You go to these conferences.

[986] And he's like, there's all of these sessions for principals on teacher retention, on the great problem of trying to keep teachers in the workforce because they all leave.

[987] He's like, my brother is almost 60, principal for like 30 years, whatever.

[988] He's like, I've only had one teacher quit on me my entire time.

[989] And they came back the next year.

[990] So he was like, I don't understand a system where how do you have a profession as revered as teaching that everybody who once they start wants to leave?

[991] He says the answer is really simple.

[992] In Canada, they don't do that because we pay.

[993] them properly and we value them.

[994] This isn't a huge mystery.

[995] Why do you guys spend so much time agonizing over the problem of teacher attention when all you have to do is take a step back, pick them properly and pay them properly.

[996] Like because we don't want to like...

[997] Make it a job people would compete for.

[998] Exactly.

[999] He's like his people lined up outside the door to be teachers.

[1000] Yeah.

[1001] You know, like it's just a different, I mean, it's Canada.

[1002] It's not like another planet.

[1003] It's like just up there.

[1004] Yeah.

[1005] And they have kind of managed to conceive of this problem in a very different way.

[1006] And we're still struggling, you know, decades later with, oh, doing everything but pay people enough to want to stay in the job.

[1007] Right.

[1008] It's so obvious.

[1009] It's obvious.

[1010] Can I throw one at you?

[1011] Because this is one that bumped for me recently.

[1012] This thing cycled through my liberal silo that I live in and move around through.

[1013] And I'm married to a fellow liberal, right?

[1014] And she forwarded me this thing and said, oh, isn't this distilled?

[1015] And it was a story from a photojournalist who started working in New York.

[1016] And early in their career, they were taking pictures of black people who had either been killed or crime scene stuff.

[1017] And then the editor, I think of the Times, they said, a friend said, look, stop taking pictures of black people.

[1018] That's never going to, at best, it'll make the fifth page of a newspaper.

[1019] So that's clearly well documented.

[1020] And I have no issue with that.

[1021] But the conclusion of this was, look how racist the paper is.

[1022] And my thought was, let's also think that this may be more a problem of empathy.

[1023] The readership of the New York Times is predominantly white.

[1024] People identify with people that look like them on the front page.

[1025] And if they don't see someone that looks like them, they might not buy the paper.

[1026] I don't know that we hung the issue on the right problem.

[1027] I mean, clearly, let me just say, I think it goes without saying, it's absurd that black people's lives shouldn't make the front page.

[1028] That's clearly a problem we need to fix and address.

[1029] My issue is just how do we fix it and address it?

[1030] If we just say, hey, this is racist, stop being racist.

[1031] Will that result?

[1032] Will we get the result we want?

[1033] I'm more concerned about the danger of every time African Americans are represented in the media, it is in the context of some criminal event.

[1034] Right.

[1035] Like the percentage of African Americans who are criminals is tiny, right?

[1036] Most black people are as solid as citizens as in.

[1037] anyone else.

[1038] And yet the way that they are, if all you did, if you were a Martian coming down and all you did was watch the news and movies and the newspapers, you would think that there was the criminal population of this country was entirely black and Hispanic, right?

[1039] That concerns me more.

[1040] So maybe if they're replacing these dark pictures with a more balanced portrayal of black people's lives, then I'm all in favor of it.

[1041] A little restraint on the subject of associating black people exclusively with criminality is, you know, I think of this.

[1042] Has the image of young black men been so polluted by this kind of selective media attention that they're just, everyone's just assuming these kids are thugs?

[1043] They have to deal with this stereotype as young black men every day.

[1044] And it must be so corrosive to be someone who is a professional architect.

[1045] And then you step out of the office and all of a sudden people consider you as like that, I don't know.

[1046] Have you read Whistling Vivaldi or heard of that book?

[1047] There's a book about race relations in America.

[1048] It's called Whistling Vivaldi.

[1049] And it starts with a kid leaving maybe like Columbia or something, a kid in school.

[1050] And he realized when he was walking down the streets going home at night.

[1051] And, you know, he's a kid.

[1052] He's wearing a hoodie like any 18 -year -old is that people would cross to the other side of the street, keep their distance from him.

[1053] so he started whistling Vivaldi.

[1054] That's so amazing.

[1055] And no one crossed.

[1056] Like once they, you know, they placed him in a different realm, then they felt at ease.

[1057] It's so fascinating.

[1058] He's the same person the whole time.

[1059] It's really interesting.

[1060] Oh, that is really interesting.

[1061] That is.

[1062] Okay.

[1063] Bear with me. I've never read questions.

[1064] This is very impressive.

[1065] You have me so, you have me a titter.

[1066] Serious homework was done before.

[1067] I fucking love you.

[1068] It's rare that I worship people, but you are in a small, it's you and Jay -Z and who else, Bill Murray.

[1069] Okay.

[1070] What is your goal for this book?

[1071] One of the things I thought of while listening was, man, our communication is so subjective.

[1072] It's so steeped in cultural cues that minimally we should hope to recognize that other people are communicating with us through tons of layers.

[1073] Is the goal to ultimately be patient and sympathetic to other people?

[1074] Is that part of it?

[1075] That's the whole thing.

[1076] That's the whole thing.

[1077] I mean, the whole idea is of talking to strangers is that when you talk to a stranger, as I say in the end, be cautious and be humble.

[1078] Don't be in a hurry.

[1079] Chances are you are getting that person wrong.

[1080] You are attending to the wrong cues.

[1081] You don't understand the context in which they are speaking to you.

[1082] I could go on and on and on.

[1083] Just give yourself a chance to revisit that set of impressions on that person.

[1084] Yeah, I think it's also helpful to recognize, like, you're as absurd to them as they are to you.

[1085] Like, there's an equal amount in both, always in both directions of kind of miscommunication and probably mostly good faith, but gone sideways.

[1086] You know, I kept reading it going, like, I'm sympathetic to everybody in the story.

[1087] Like, no one has the all -knowing sphere in their hand.

[1088] You know, we're all as equally confused generally.

[1089] Yeah, yeah.

[1090] Monica, where's your list of questions?

[1091] Do you, you?

[1092] Oopsies.

[1093] Do you think it's possible for people to really overcome their collection of biases that we accumulate over time?

[1094] Like, in those seconds you have with a stranger?

[1095] No. I mean, I think there are some people who are better at it than others.

[1096] That's obvious.

[1097] But that's true of everything that we do.

[1098] Yeah.

[1099] The problem is it's impossible to accumulate all of the necessary information in that period of time.

[1100] So if I'm talking to you right now and you look profoundly uncomfortable, That is either because I'm making you uncomfortable or you're uncomfortable for some reason that I don't know.

[1101] Right.

[1102] That I may never know and that you don't want to tell me or that is deeply personal or, and I have no way of knowing.

[1103] And there's a vast difference.

[1104] You may really enjoy talking to me, but something happened this morning in your life that you're struggling with.

[1105] And, you know, so it's that level.

[1106] If you and I were siblings, this would not be a problem.

[1107] Right.

[1108] Right.

[1109] I would know the context in which you were from.

[1110] But because we are strangers, there's just too much ground to cover.

[1111] And in that example I just gave, what's always amazing is our default is always, oh, it's about me. Right.

[1112] Exactly.

[1113] We're projecting all of our own stuff on it, too.

[1114] Whereas I would argue that probably 90 % of the time it's not about, it's not about us at all.

[1115] It's about something, you know, in the grand scheme of things, there's an infinite list of things that could be driving your moods.

[1116] Yeah.

[1117] There's a great, I didn't put in the book, but my great example of this is, so Kauai Leonard, best basketball player on a planet when he was drafted out of college gets an interview with the Phoenix Sons who are thinking of drafting him very high and afterwards they say no no we're not drafting him why because during the interview 19 year old Kauai wearing a suit was sweating so profusely that they could see the rings under his armpits and they were like no we want a guy who's cool under pressure now no one is cooler under pressure than Kauai right so why was Kauai sweating well I don't know that he could have been hot.

[1118] He could have not wanted to...

[1119] Do you say Phoenix?

[1120] He's in Phoenix?

[1121] He could have not worn a suit in a long time.

[1122] He could have had a fever.

[1123] Could have had a fever.

[1124] I mean...

[1125] And meanwhile, the idiocy of that is, of course, the general manager of the Phoenix Suns has literally hundreds of hours of tape that he can use to evaluate Kauai Leonard as a basketball player.

[1126] But he chooses in that moment, in that interaction, to prioritize the bit of information he gathers for himself in the moment.

[1127] He can't get away.

[1128] In other words, he has to make the judgment about him.

[1129] Yeah.

[1130] I saw Kauai and Kauai's was sweating through his shirt.

[1131] I don't want that guy.

[1132] Yeah.

[1133] Yeah.

[1134] That is, I mean, I don't want to demonize that guy, that GM, because I feel it's a quintessentially human mistake that we make with a stranger.

[1135] Well, and also that like all things are equal.

[1136] So his, his pressure level on a basketball court where he has this insane ability, talent, practice, history versus meeting a bunch of white dudes, I'm assuming they're white.

[1137] in an office, these aren't even relatable things, right?

[1138] They're not.

[1139] Yeah.

[1140] I mean, how many 19 -year -olds who are going for a job interview in which literally tens of millions of dollars are at stake would not be nervous.

[1141] I'd be concerned if he wasn't nervous.

[1142] Yeah.

[1143] What's the matter with you?

[1144] Where's your, yeah, don't you care?

[1145] My breakthrough personally was I was the director of a movie and my mother, I invited my mother to work on the movie.

[1146] This was a low -budget movie.

[1147] was doing craft services.

[1148] So, could we just pause and have some respect for Dax's mother?

[1149] This is fantastic.

[1150] She came and helped you on this.

[1151] She's the best.

[1152] Well, let's not celebrate her too hard because she didn't quit with two weeks later.

[1153] At any rate, it was such a breakthrough for me. I had the title director, which means I'm the top person on that pyramid, right?

[1154] Yeah.

[1155] There was a PA that had objectively a terrible personality.

[1156] When he talked to me, it was very condescending.

[1157] I was never in the right place at the right time.

[1158] Somehow, he was the boss and I was doing things for my mind.

[1159] Now, because I had the official title of director, that guy never bothered me. I was like, he has a bad personality.

[1160] That's what's going on here.

[1161] He can't re -cues.

[1162] Now, my mother who had a role that wasn't the highest status, she couldn't stand this guy.

[1163] She's like, oh, my God, he's telling me to do this and tell him to do that.

[1164] And I'm like, oh, my God, always I feel like you.

[1165] If I didn't have this arbitrary title of director whereby I don't feel threatened at all, I would be thinking the exact same thing about this guy.

[1166] Oh, he thinks he's better than me. He's bossing me around, blah, blah, blah.

[1167] Yeah.

[1168] But I just was like, oh, he's got a bad personality.

[1169] keep it moving.

[1170] And I was like, oh my gosh, if I could walk through life just feeling like I'm the director at all time, everyone's behavior would be exactly what it is, just their behavior.

[1171] Yeah, that's funny.

[1172] I want to know your experience with becoming famous.

[1173] It's a surreal experience, right?

[1174] I have to imagine there's pros and cons.

[1175] I can already guess at what the pros are for you.

[1176] As someone who's super interested in people, having access to people who are very interesting, is that the highlight of it all?

[1177] Yes, although being famous doesn't give you more access to interesting people.

[1178] Come on.

[1179] No. I can promise you any human being in Los Angeles that receives a phone call and says, Malcolm Gladwell wants to meet with you.

[1180] I can promise you Bob Eiger is taking that.

[1181] Any person, name the person, they're going to meet with you.

[1182] I guess, I mean, I suppose.

[1183] But my point was that there are a lot of interesting people who, that's assuming that the most interesting people are the people who are the highest up the food chain are the hardest to find, hardest to get access to.

[1184] In fact, most interesting people are actually very easy to get access to, right?

[1185] In my experience, your interestingness is a kind of largely a function of how close you are to the action in whatever you're doing.

[1186] So when people get too high up, they're no longer that interesting.

[1187] Because they're so detached from that.

[1188] Yeah, they're just like, they're just not, they don't have that kind of, what's interesting is specificity.

[1189] What's interesting is detail, this happened to me yesterday.

[1190] What's not interesting is, well, when I was 25, the last.

[1191] time I was a normal person.

[1192] This happened.

[1193] Yes.

[1194] That doesn't help me. And I'm not interested in when you were 25, right?

[1195] It's like, I want to know what's going on right now.

[1196] Like, it's funny.

[1197] If you look at talking to strangers, this book, all of the most interesting interviews that comprise that book are interviews that I could have gotten if I was a total unknown.

[1198] They were not contingent on having a recognizable profile.

[1199] I would say the special thing has simply been that I can now control my own time and direction and, you know, I'm in my own, I can be my own boss.

[1200] I can make my own choices.

[1201] That's the kind of gift.

[1202] That's the amazing thing.

[1203] Yeah.

[1204] And that, you know, when you can wake up in the morning and what happens in the day is up to you, to me, that's the greatest feeling in the world.

[1205] And what about mom?

[1206] Because I think we both, mom for me is number one love of my life.

[1207] I don't know if you'll go that far, but I do know you love your mom and you've credited her as being your writing, your writing inspiration.

[1208] Yeah.

[1209] When mom watches, because I remember watching you on 60 Minutes.

[1210] I guess it was probably eight years ago or something.

[1211] Thrilled to see you.

[1212] I'd only read.

[1213] I don't think I'd even seen a photo of you.

[1214] And I'm like, oh, this is the guy.

[1215] So very exciting to me. What was mom's feedback from seeing her son on 60 minutes?

[1216] Because as someone who left Jamaica, went to England, then went to Canada, and then her kid ends up on 60 minutes.

[1217] I have to imagine.

[1218] I'm not convinced my mother ever saw that show.

[1219] That's probably the healthiest.

[1220] I grew up without a TV.

[1221] Oh.

[1222] So my parents got.

[1223] a TV very, very late in life.

[1224] And in fact, they got a TV because I bought them a TV, but then they objected in classic, because this is very much my mom.

[1225] My mom was, I bought her TV, she said, I can't accept it.

[1226] I said, why?

[1227] She said, it's too big.

[1228] Meanwhile, it was like, it was like two feet across.

[1229] I was like, what do you mean it's too big?

[1230] She goes, well, if the neighbors saw that, they would think that I was putting on airs.

[1231] So I had to take the TV back and get a smaller TV.

[1232] But she watches, like, you know, British costume dramas.

[1233] Oh, okay.

[1234] Like a, uh, the...

[1235] Downton Abbey.

[1236] You know, and BBC detective shows.

[1237] Like that kind of, I don't know.

[1238] I just know that like, she has a show.

[1239] She'll say, I'm, it's Friday night I'm watching my show and I assume it's something to do with the BBC.

[1240] She will listen to stuff that I've done on the radio.

[1241] She's an audio person largely.

[1242] Or she'll read stuff about me. But no, so in answer to your question, yeah, my, I think my mom is, yeah, she's a mom.

[1243] I mean, like, it's all.

[1244] good.

[1245] But she's happier if I call her.

[1246] I mean, yes.

[1247] Given the choice between Malcolm winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and Malcolm calling here, I think she would opt for calling.

[1248] Well, you know what's interesting is I ask that question.

[1249] I don't think it's healthy for parents to be fans of their children.

[1250] I've seen that with friends of mine who their parents are fans.

[1251] And that's a very unhealthy dynamic.

[1252] Yeah.

[1253] My mom still thinks I'm a piece of shit enough that I think it's a good, it's the good level.

[1254] Like she still thinks I'm a little half scumbag, which is good.

[1255] But I guess I'm more asking the question probably coming.

[1256] from the position of being a parent now and imagining just watching my little girls on 60 minutes at some point like what that would do to me. And recently I launched this theory for Monica.

[1257] So Monica's father moved from India when he was 22 -ish.

[1258] To Atlanta, met Monica's mother, had a child, he is a structural engineer and had this daughter and now the daughter does what she does in Los Angeles and she makes money and she, and it occurred to me. me recently, oh, I'm not in my simulation.

[1259] I'm in her father's simulation.

[1260] I am a character.

[1261] I'm a character in her father's, which I never even consider.

[1262] No one ever considers.

[1263] They're actually just...

[1264] By the way, that's the most Indian immigrant story of all time.

[1265] I know.

[1266] I know.

[1267] It could be more cliche.

[1268] It's like...

[1269] Well, that's the architects are making it very, they're not being creative when they're making the matrix.

[1270] The only, the only, you're breaking the cliche by not.

[1271] I mean, how many graduate degrees do you have?

[1272] Zero.

[1273] Zero.

[1274] Okay, right there.

[1275] So right there.

[1276] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1277] You're not.

[1278] You're I didn't, do you planning on going to medical school at all?

[1279] No, no. No, no plans of that.

[1280] That's true.

[1281] Rule it out.

[1282] Don't rule it out.

[1283] Yeah.

[1284] But yeah, but everything else about that is kind of fantastic.

[1285] We had, um, my dad had an unbroken string because he was a math professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, which is an unbroken string of Indian grad students.

[1286] From like 1969 to like 19, probably the mid -90s, I think he had like two non -Indians.

[1287] Wow.

[1288] It was just one after the other.

[1289] Yeah.

[1290] I grew up with us on Friday nights going to his graduate students for dinner and, you know, and I lived growing up in this oddly Indian immigrant world because I was in the world of math graduate students at a math university, right?

[1291] Sort of hilarious.

[1292] Yeah, I mean, I think that they would have wanted me to do something predictable, but only because of the security element of that.

[1293] The financial security.

[1294] Only because A plus B equals C there.

[1295] But I think they're so much happier now that, like, things are working out and it's this weird other path that's not predictable.

[1296] Like, I think they would pick this now knowing that it all worked out.

[1297] But before, it was scary.

[1298] Well, it was for your parents' generation, there was really no alternative.

[1299] The predictable path was the only path.

[1300] The only path.

[1301] Exactly.

[1302] That was very, yeah, that's the interesting.

[1303] Yeah.

[1304] You have the freedom of one generation's removed from that kind of pressure.

[1305] pressure.

[1306] Well, Malcolm, I love you.

[1307] I hope there will be some reason on a revisionist history that you need a mid -level comedian's point of view on something.

[1308] I do.

[1309] I'm objectively on mid -level, which is a great lifestyle.

[1310] I'm not complaining.

[1311] But I do hope that I'll be called upon someday.

[1312] I'm always at your disposal should you ever need.

[1313] Or how about even you do a story about guys married to very famous women who make more money than him?

[1314] That's a very unique experience that I've I've had a front row seat, too.

[1315] So just, I'm throwing it all out there.

[1316] All right.

[1317] Anytime you call, I'm at your disposal.

[1318] Your book is phenomenal.

[1319] It's so, so good.

[1320] Listen to it.

[1321] Listen to it.

[1322] And you, Malcolm, are very good at reading your own, your own writing.

[1323] Some people, it's varying, varying levels of execution on that.

[1324] But you do a very good job of reading.

[1325] And that's all.

[1326] Thank you so much for your time.

[1327] Thank you.

[1328] Yeah.

[1329] Come back and hang out.

[1330] Thank you.

[1331] When you write another book.

[1332] This is really fun.

[1333] Okay.

[1334] And again, Monica, too.

[1335] Monica's at your disposal.

[1336] Yeah, I'm here.

[1337] Not Robbie Rob.

[1338] Thank you so much.

[1339] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[1340] You know what song I heard on the truck ride to set?

[1341] Walk like an Egyptian.

[1342] Oh, sure.

[1343] I know that one.

[1344] And you know, when that came out, I remember, I don't know what I was, maybe 13 -ish.

[1345] I was like, sure.

[1346] This is a song about walking.

[1347] like an Egyptian.

[1348] That's what the song's about.

[1349] And that's a totally normal subject matter for a song.

[1350] Yeah.

[1351] And then I got curious about the other lyrics.

[1352] And the lyrics really are all over the place.

[1353] They cover a lot of territory.

[1354] Do they?

[1355] Do you want to hear some of them?

[1356] I do.

[1357] Okay.

[1358] I felt like it was worth screen grabbing.

[1359] Okay.

[1360] Let's hear.

[1361] Okay.

[1362] Let's see.

[1363] All the old paintings on the tombs, they do the sand dance, don't you?

[1364] you know they move too quick they'll fall down like a domino one domino all right all the bizarre men by the nile they got the money on a bet gold crocodiles they snap their teeth on your cigarette horn types with the hookah pipes say a oh a way oh a walk like an egyptian we know that blonde waitresses take their trays they spin around and they cross the floor they've got the moon moves, you drop your drink, and they give you more.

[1365] All the school kids so sick of books, they like the punk in the metal band.

[1366] When the buzzer rings, they're walking like an Egyptian.

[1367] All the kids in the marketplace say, oh, A -O -A -O -A, walk like an Egyptian.

[1368] It gets into police.

[1369] You ready?

[1370] Okay.

[1371] If you want to find all the cops, they're hanging out in the donut shop.

[1372] They sing and dance, spin the clubs, cruise down the block.

[1373] All the Japanese with their yen, the party boys, call the Kremlin and the Chinese no, oh, A, O, A, O .A. Oh.

[1374] Wow.

[1375] Yeah, just kind of touching in on all the different groups, police, children, Chinese.

[1376] Sounds like maybe a kid wrote that song.

[1377] I don't feel confident that feels like a bunch of words kind of just thrown in.

[1378] Some of the sentences don't make sense.

[1379] They don't really hold up to critical scrutiny.

[1380] Oh, bummer.

[1381] But, you know, still a great song.

[1382] It's not taking anything away from the, who are they?

[1383] Who knows?

[1384] No, I do.

[1385] Property Brothers?

[1386] No, the authors of this tune.

[1387] I know.

[1388] I don't know.

[1389] It is.

[1390] The Bengals.

[1391] Oh, the Bengals.

[1392] Yeah.

[1393] The Bengal Tigers?

[1394] You would be not feminist if you were critical of the song.

[1395] It would make you anti -feminist.

[1396] Oh, it would?

[1397] To be critical of that song.

[1398] Oh, it's a feminist anthem?

[1399] Well, it's by all women.

[1400] I have an equal opportunity.

[1401] Critic.

[1402] Critic.

[1403] So that does make me a feminist, because I critique women and men equally.

[1404] And that song is bad.

[1405] Well, hold on, hold on.

[1406] We don't want to be on record as saying it's bad.

[1407] I'm allowed to have that opinion.

[1408] Look, it is quite simply a song about walking like an Egyptian.

[1409] And then I got curious, here's why I looked up the lyrics.

[1410] I got curious, did they mean historical Egyptians or modern day folks in Egypt?

[1411] And I'm leaning towards historical.

[1412] historical.

[1413] Cleopatra, Asp.

[1414] I mean, their ass.

[1415] Asp.

[1416] It's always a crossword clue.

[1417] Who killed Cleopatra, a snake, an asp.

[1418] Oh, a three word.

[1419] Yeah.

[1420] Some of those three -worders come up all the time.

[1421] Yeah.

[1422] It's also racist because it's like, it's pretending that Egyptians used to walk with their hands poking.

[1423] Well, judging from the hieroglyphics, I think they determine that that's how.

[1424] they did kind of a cool man walk everywhere they went one in front one in back stuck their hands yeah and then they made their chin go in it out yeah it's racist well can you be well i guess you could be racist against historical people i think in their mind they were more talking about cartoons okay you know what i'm saying yeah but the cartoon is based off a racist stereotype of egyptians i mean i i understand what you're saying but it's just there's nothing inherently about walking the way they were portrayed to walk.

[1425] It's just curious.

[1426] Well, it's like these people don't know how to walk regular.

[1427] They walk with their hands sticking out both sides.

[1428] It could have been so that they could have preempted the asp to strike.

[1429] Like maybe that was a decoy with the hand out front.

[1430] Oh.

[1431] So that the asp would strike be out of venom and then they could proceed with caution but still proceed safely.

[1432] Oh.

[1433] Or would the asp get confused and think those hands were a snake or another.

[1434] Asp.

[1435] Yeah, I think that would be the goal.

[1436] Oh, it's just, but they wouldn't strike then.

[1437] They're just like, oh, it's just another snake friend of mine, so I'm not going to come out of my lair.

[1438] And do you think there are any police officers that were really liking the song, like the first half of the song?

[1439] And then all of a sudden's like, all the cops are in donut shops and like, wait, why are we in this song?

[1440] So many stereotypes in the song.

[1441] Historical Egyptians.

[1442] Yeah.

[1443] And Asp.

[1444] I'm a little upset.

[1445] There's no reference to Asps in this song.

[1446] I'm really sorry.

[1447] I guess that'd be more like run like an Egyptian.

[1448] If there was an asp involved, they'd probably be running.

[1449] I would assume.

[1450] How do you think they ran?

[1451] Oh, I can.

[1452] Well, based on how they walk, I have to imagine it's like Zakembo.

[1453] Skaddy Wampas at best.

[1454] Okay, well, this is not no time.

[1455] Although this is the exact kind of topic that Malcolm might find some foray into.

[1456] Yeah, and then actually make some great conclusion.

[1457] We just don't have that power of.

[1458] conclusion.

[1459] No, we don't.

[1460] We're more confused the more research we do.

[1461] I have way more questions now.

[1462] Me too.

[1463] Than I had this morning when I heard it.

[1464] He is the best podcast.

[1465] As I've said.

[1466] As I've said, and I'll keep saying it.

[1467] Revision is history.

[1468] Revision is history.

[1469] Revision is history.

[1470] I listen to, I think, three of them on the ride of the sand dunes last weekend.

[1471] Did you listen to any of the ones I told you to?

[1472] Yes, all of the ones.

[1473] And I love them.

[1474] I've yet to hear one that's not incredibly stimulating.

[1475] Did you listen to the one where he takes the LSAT?

[1476] Oh, it's interesting.

[1477] Malcolm takes it?

[1478] Yeah.

[1479] Okay.

[1480] And he does poorly?

[1481] Well, the episode is about why we in America have these standardized tests.

[1482] Yes, and how we test based on timing and all this stuff that has no actual translation into life.

[1483] Right.

[1484] No reflection of their workplace.

[1485] Yeah.

[1486] It's worth listening to.

[1487] Well, Well, generally, though, when I'm acting and they say action, a person does hit the stopwatch.

[1488] What do you mean?

[1489] To make sure I do it in under 30 seconds.

[1490] Well, you don't have a normal job.

[1491] No, well, and I'm teasing.

[1492] On commercials, you do have to be, do it in a certain amount of time.

[1493] Oh, speaking of my beer worked.

[1494] We should tell everyone that my beer worked.

[1495] Your lucky beer.

[1496] Yes.

[1497] That a guest left behind.

[1498] Yeah.

[1499] And you booked your audition.

[1500] I did.

[1501] And so we think now maybe a half beer before every screen test or network test.

[1502] Yeah.

[1503] Yeah, all the big ones.

[1504] Yeah, I think that's a healthy way to go about life.

[1505] Like, I need alcohol to succeed.

[1506] A half beer.

[1507] Well, the magic beer, specifically that guest's beer.

[1508] That's true.

[1509] We're going to have to invite her back and say, can you please buy a whole lot of beer on your way?

[1510] But there's two in there, which means four auditions.

[1511] It can get pretty flat, though.

[1512] Yeah, I think it has to be.

[1513] You would drink a flat beer to book a network show, right?

[1514] Of course.

[1515] Yeah, so you've got four auditions left in the fridge.

[1516] All right.

[1517] Does beer go bad?

[1518] Once you open it.

[1519] I mean, it just starts tasting worse and worse, but I don't know that it gets poisonous unless it's in there for, you know, a year or something.

[1520] Age beer.

[1521] Sure.

[1522] Rob ages his beer sometimes when occasion calls for it.

[1523] I do have some aged beer, actually.

[1524] Do you?

[1525] Like how old?

[1526] From 2015.

[1527] Okay.

[1528] It's like a Bourbon County Goose Island that's meant to be.

[1529] Oh, so you're supposed to buy it and then let it sit for five years?

[1530] Some of them, not necessarily five years, but they're meant to age.

[1531] But do you open it?

[1532] Eventually.

[1533] No, I mean, you didn't open it and set it in the fridge and let it age.

[1534] Oh, let it air out.

[1535] Yeah, air out for five years.

[1536] No, no. Now, then there's stouts, too, so they're thicker.

[1537] So really robust beer.

[1538] And is the alcohol content going up as it ages?

[1539] It's like 14 % already.

[1540] Oh, wow.

[1541] So you might get it up to like 20.

[1542] Maybe.

[1543] I probably shouldn't have one of those beers before an audition.

[1544] No, I think show.

[1545] I should.

[1546] I shing show.

[1547] I will.

[1548] Okay, good.

[1549] Well, congratulations.

[1550] Thanks so much.

[1551] Someone talking on a megaphone or something?

[1552] I hear something.

[1553] It's just outside.

[1554] Well, everyone, we're on another field trip today.

[1555] That's why there's some sound.

[1556] Fourth field trip here?

[1557] I feel like he must be about the fourth field trip.

[1558] Yeah, something like that.

[1559] Anyway, Malcolm was a delight.

[1560] Oh, my goodness.

[1561] It was so exciting to have him.

[1562] And then you were attracted to him.

[1563] I was.

[1564] I had only seen him on 60 minutes.

[1565] Sure.

[1566] And then in real life, I found that he had a real devilish sparkle in his eye.

[1567] He would like look out the side of his eyes.

[1568] at you side eye you in a very well and not you but just anyone I'm saying yeah and it was very flirty yeah I'm not saying that he was inappropriate or that he was flirty he was definitely not he had very playful eyes very flirty eyes and I left the interview going I bet a lot of women love Malcolm yeah yeah he has got a real smooth confidence and real flirty playful eyes just sexy that's all i wanted to say about him and again you might think why are you talking about how sexy he is he's an intellectual and he's got a lot of but again this is what i would want him to think about me well we i hope he thinks i was sexy okay do you think he did yes i do okay god okay no i think everyone already knows he's so smart and interesting and thoughtful and curing Everyone already knows those things.

[1569] So you are attempting to display something.

[1570] Maybe people don't know.

[1571] I'm rounding out people's perception of him by saying he's very, very attractive and flirty and playful.

[1572] And his eyes.

[1573] Yeah, yeah.

[1574] Would you want him to have concluded you were sexy?

[1575] Of course.

[1576] I want everyone to conclude that, though.

[1577] Well, sometimes I don't know.

[1578] I will say I started growing more and more curious about what, Malcolm looks like with his shirt off because I was thinking well he's running these great distances I'm sure he's definitely chiseled yeah yeah I love it yeah yeah okay so you said that nobody's been referenced more on the podcast than him okay there that's not true it's not well no Kristen the most okay that's fair um sometimes eight or nine times in one episode okay so So could we say non -family members?

[1579] Okay, sure.

[1580] Let me think.

[1581] I think that claims been made about a few guests.

[1582] That's what I was just about to say.

[1583] Well, we make it about Sam Harris.

[1584] Sometimes I say that about Sam.

[1585] I think you maybe said it to Adam.

[1586] I think you did.

[1587] You've said it a few times.

[1588] And so they can't all be correct.

[1589] Right.

[1590] Unless they were in a dead tie.

[1591] Unless.

[1592] Which they're likely not.

[1593] They're likely not.

[1594] So I don't know who is.

[1595] I'm going to leave that to an armchair to figure out.

[1596] mean is I feel like he more than anyone else shaped how I think of different things because he's so good at pointing out all these different things that are counterintuitive and I'm most drawn to things that are counterintuitive counterintuitive counter and two but listen see too that's not what you said at all okay I won't say his name but I'll be like oh but it's like the Korean airline pilots you know like I feel like I'm always referencing his ideas yes his ideas and trying to repackage them as my own No, I think I try to give them credit.

[1597] There's no one else that we've had on that you've poached as many ideas from.

[1598] Yeah, I think that.

[1599] That's probably true.

[1600] That we could say.

[1601] And we could say.

[1602] Okay.

[1603] How big is the population of Canada?

[1604] He said 32 million, 37 .59 million.

[1605] Wow.

[1606] Yeah.

[1607] That's not a lot.

[1608] No, it's not.

[1609] It's a tiny amount.

[1610] They're nearly tied with California, right?

[1611] How big is California?

[1612] In that range, $35 million?

[1613] 40 million.

[1614] All right.

[1615] Well, that's another fact to look up.

[1616] 49 .5 .6 million.

[1617] 30.

[1618] Good.

[1619] So we're just barely in the lead.

[1620] This is California.

[1621] California.

[1622] Oh, yeah, California.

[1623] Fifth largest economy in the world.

[1624] Oh, yeah.

[1625] So proud of it.

[1626] I'm so proud of California.

[1627] I got.

[1628] You know what I thought was interesting is his dad is a math professor and his mom is a psychotherapist?

[1629] Uh -huh.

[1630] And a writer.

[1631] Yeah, and he's just the perfect combo.

[1632] He is.

[1633] Yes, because he has.

[1634] a real aptitude for statistics.

[1635] He loves data.

[1636] Yeah.

[1637] That's the math dad side.

[1638] Yes, that's the math daddy.

[1639] Yeah.

[1640] And then, yeah, he loves the social sciences and that's the mommy.

[1641] That's the psycho mom.

[1642] Yeah, psycho mom, but not in a negative, not a pejorative.

[1643] Sure.

[1644] Well, we don't know her.

[1645] Okay.

[1646] He's going to hate this if he listens.

[1647] Malcolm, you messed up.

[1648] Uh -oh.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] I have to correct a fact, he said.

[1651] Oh, wow.

[1652] That's exciting.

[1653] No. It's like blocking a shot from Michael Jordan.

[1654] Oh, it feels good and sad and good.

[1655] Okay, he said every single person who's ever run for president with four exceptions has been a middle -aged white Protestant male over six feet.

[1656] And he said Jimmy Carter was short.

[1657] Kennedy was Catholic.

[1658] Obama was black and Hillary was a woman.

[1659] He didn't say like in the modern era or anything.

[1660] He said in the last hundred years.

[1661] Oh, last hondo.

[1662] Okay.

[1663] And I am really proud of this.

[1664] I thought of someone on my own before looking up.

[1665] I was like, huh, I wonder how tall that person was.

[1666] Remember Ross Perot?

[1667] Oh, yeah.

[1668] 5 -5, Ross Perot.

[1669] Like you.

[1670] He was a miniature mouse with maximum horsepower.

[1671] That's right.

[1672] Yeah.

[1673] He was only 5 -5.

[1674] And so Malcolm, sorry.

[1675] Sorry.

[1676] Sorry.

[1677] And then I started going down a rabbit hole of Heights.

[1678] Now really quick, I just wonder if he would say this.

[1679] Okay.

[1680] Since Rospero ran as an independent, would he say of the major parties?

[1681] Is that his point?

[1682] I would hope not because.

[1683] Certainly there's some, some bozo running for, you know, the pink party or something that's like.

[1684] But Rossboro was an actual candidate that took votes from people.

[1685] He sure did.

[1686] Yeah.

[1687] So you could say that about like the fringe, fringe random.

[1688] Right.

[1689] But he wasn't a fringe fringe random.

[1690] No, no, he wasn't.

[1691] He was a legitimate.

[1692] Close to mainstream.

[1693] Yeah.

[1694] Who do you think is the tallest president to ever live?

[1695] You had a guess.

[1696] Well, A. Blinken comes right to mind.

[1697] That would be in my running.

[1698] That's correct.

[1699] It is.

[1700] Yeah.

[1701] Six -four.

[1702] Yeah.

[1703] Well, they say he had, God, I wish I could remember the name of it right now.

[1704] But they believe that he had this genetic disease that really tall people have where your aorta blows up.

[1705] They say he would have died anyways because he had this disease and there's.

[1706] all these markers like his his gaunt face and a couple other things oh my god do you see what type in what genetic disease does marfan yeah yeah marfan yeah marfan and i when i read that in high school i got convinced i had marfin syndrome so i'm like six three you might have it yeah yeah i'm gaunt and gangly and duffeasy looking those are all the criteria your doctor will look at you and go doofy check gangly yeah you got marfins you got marfins Dude, you have marfin.

[1707] Yeah.

[1708] But it doesn't affect anything because...

[1709] Well, until that aorta just explodes.

[1710] Oh, I forgot about that part.

[1711] Yeah, yeah.

[1712] Most people in Marphins die prematurely by a lot.

[1713] But Abe made it through?

[1714] Well, he got shot in the head.

[1715] But he was oldish.

[1716] Well, not old.

[1717] Yeah, I think he would have probably...

[1718] They say he would have expired shortly there after from this marfins.

[1719] Due to the Smarfs.

[1720] Yeah, from his case of this.

[1721] You know, Hillary was on Stern.

[1722] She was on last week.

[1723] He asked her, what was the best president ever?

[1724] Oh.

[1725] And she immediately said Abraham Lincoln.

[1726] And he said, not George Washington.

[1727] She said, well, he would be second, but definitely Abraham Lincoln.

[1728] If you just look at what kind of conviction and portitude it took to make the decisions he had to make, which would ultimately rip the country.

[1729] and half.

[1730] Yeah.

[1731] For the good, a greater good.

[1732] Marfins actually may make you have exceptional character.

[1733] Conviction?

[1734] Yeah.

[1735] You have that.

[1736] Oh.

[1737] So you have Marfins.

[1738] One more clue.

[1739] You did not look duffacy.

[1740] Well, no. I've had some dofacy moments, I think.

[1741] Well, we all have had that.

[1742] I'm real gangly is the thing.

[1743] When you're gangly and you like, say, lose your balance, you can immediately veer into dufous territory.

[1744] First of all, I've maybe never seen you lose your balance.

[1745] Well, like, when you bumped into that door at the time, there was so embarrassing.

[1746] There was nothing doofy about it.

[1747] Yeah.

[1748] There's, but if like, Jess or I had done that, you'd have been like, what a doofus.

[1749] No, no, no, no. You don't think so?

[1750] No, it's equally dupacy if someone walks into a door.

[1751] You looked great bouncing off that door.

[1752] Because it was just this little person, it was like, point.

[1753] It was almost like a cartoon.

[1754] Whereas if we would have done it, we were like folded up into a pancake on the ground or somewhere.

[1755] Arms would have been flying.

[1756] I think equally cartoonish.

[1757] Just different characters in the cartoon.

[1758] Right.

[1759] So do Fisi nonetheless, but you don't have gangliness, even though you're tall.

[1760] You don't think so?

[1761] No. And like either does Jess.

[1762] I would never, ever describe him as gangly.

[1763] Well, he's so athletic.

[1764] Although that walk he does.

[1765] He's going to love that you said that.

[1766] Okay.

[1767] So Abe, good old honest Abe.

[1768] was 6 -4.

[1769] I got a hunch who's second.

[1770] There's a bunch of people that are 5 -11 and 5 -11 and a half that I think got rounded up.

[1771] Sure.

[1772] Well, they're in those dress heels.

[1773] Well, no, even recently like George W. Bush.

[1774] Oh, it's 5 -11.

[1775] And a half.

[1776] Okay.

[1777] So he's lying.

[1778] LBJ was real tall as well.

[1779] LBJ?

[1780] Yeah.

[1781] And then guess who's third?

[1782] So LBJ was second.

[1783] second.

[1784] He's six foot three and a half, LBJ.

[1785] And who do you think is third?

[1786] Either.

[1787] It's an upsetting answer.

[1788] Well, then Nixon?

[1789] Trump.

[1790] Oh, Trump.

[1791] Okay.

[1792] That makes sense.

[1793] He's six three.

[1794] I would have thought as well that maybe FDR when he was not seated in his wheelchair was pretty tall.

[1795] He's six two.

[1796] Okay.

[1797] I'm doing better at this than I would have expected.

[1798] You're doing pretty good.

[1799] Like, I feel like this is, you know, when you watch Jeopardy and sometimes there's a category and you're like, I don't know, mountain ranges and you don't think you know anything about it.

[1800] And then you get like three out of the five and you feel like a million dollars.

[1801] Yeah.

[1802] Yeah, you do.

[1803] You said George Washington is high up and he is.

[1804] He's six two as well.

[1805] He's tied for fourth.

[1806] Oh, okay.

[1807] But a lot of people, there's five people tied for fourth.

[1808] Okay.

[1809] So anyway, it's all interesting.

[1810] It is.

[1811] It is.

[1812] Do you see this big wrinkle in my neck?

[1813] No, I don't.

[1814] Yes, you do.

[1815] No. It's huge.

[1816] Don't act like you don't see it.

[1817] It's right there.

[1818] You got your chin way up in the air.

[1819] There's no wrinkles.

[1820] It's all flattened out.

[1821] It's huge.

[1822] It's across my whole neck.

[1823] Okay.

[1824] It's enormous.

[1825] Okay.

[1826] I noticed it recently.

[1827] I mean, I've noticed it my whole lot.

[1828] I've had it forever.

[1829] Okay.

[1830] And I really started looking at it recently and thinking like, I hate that.

[1831] I got to figure out a way to get rid of that.

[1832] Oh, like a corrective surgery?

[1833] Perhaps.

[1834] Okay.

[1835] Like a neck reduction?

[1836] I'm going to get my neck removed.

[1837] Okay.

[1838] And just put the head directly on the shoulders.

[1839] The shoulder.

[1840] Okay.

[1841] You might want to have them Photoshop that look before you go through with the procedure.

[1842] No, I feel good about it.

[1843] Okay.

[1844] And I blame being short for the wrinkle.

[1845] Oh, okay.

[1846] Because I've been stretching my neck for 32 years, especially when I was a baby.

[1847] And all these.

[1848] I'm surprised your neck hasn't gotten longer.

[1849] No, my neck is always my neck size.

[1850] And then the skin is getting stretched and then causes a wrinkle.

[1851] Mm. Okay.

[1852] I mean, this theory is as good as any other, I guess.

[1853] I know.

[1854] Do I have any?

[1855] You have none.

[1856] Well, I have this big protruding Adams apple.

[1857] You have like a tiny bit, but I think that's because you're just sitting in a way.

[1858] I am a little crunched up.

[1859] You're crunched.

[1860] You don't have any wrinkles on my neck.

[1861] Anywhere.

[1862] No, I have them on my face.

[1863] No, you don't.

[1864] Sure.

[1865] All over.

[1866] Just look at my face.

[1867] I'm staring at your face.

[1868] There's no wrinkles.

[1869] Watch, bless this mess with me. and I'll point all of it out for you.

[1870] And I'll show you all the things on there that.

[1871] Arry.

[1872] No. Asymmetrical and gangly and doofy.

[1873] And Marfan.

[1874] It reads very Marfan.

[1875] Listen, you look like a little boy.

[1876] Okay.

[1877] Yeah.

[1878] Look, I'm doing fine.

[1879] For 44, I can't complain.

[1880] You look like a 34 -year -old.

[1881] God bless you so much.

[1882] You do.

[1883] To just two years older than you.

[1884] I know.

[1885] You still look older than me, so I had to give you.

[1886] Well, you look like you're 20.

[1887] Thank you.

[1888] So you look like you're 26.

[1889] You're only like a couple years older than me. Oh, okay.

[1890] Then what's, how's Rob fit into here?

[1891] Rob looks 42.

[1892] Oh my goodness.

[1893] No, he's so young and cute.

[1894] Rob, let me see your neck.

[1895] He doesn't have any wrinkles.

[1896] He doesn't have any wrinkles.

[1897] Okay.

[1898] I heard his neck pop.

[1899] Did it just crack?

[1900] Okay.

[1901] Rob's neck's looking nice.

[1902] He doesn't have any wrinkles.

[1903] Wow.

[1904] Okay.

[1905] Youthful.

[1906] Okay.

[1907] I have some sad news.

[1908] Okay.

[1909] One of my facts got deleted.

[1910] Oh, no. And I don't know what it is.

[1911] It's the lost fact.

[1912] Oh, boy.

[1913] So there was just one more fact and it's gone?

[1914] No, there's more.

[1915] Oh.

[1916] But there was one in the middle.

[1917] And you don't remember the topic even.

[1918] And I tried to undo and it didn't work.

[1919] Control Z?

[1920] Yes, it did not work.

[1921] Didn't work.

[1922] It wasn't meant to be.

[1923] Percentage of people who do sports in high school who end up making a career out of it is 0 .001 is what Malcolm said.

[1924] And then the statistic is fewer than 2 % of NCAA student athletes go on to professional, go on to be professional athletes.

[1925] In college.

[1926] Yeah.

[1927] Yeah.

[1928] So I guess that's not even.

[1929] Right.

[1930] And then how many in high school didn't even make it in college?

[1931] I guess they can't even really test that.

[1932] I mean, they could, but they'd have to check every single student athlete.

[1933] Well, no, I think it'd be very simple.

[1934] They would take the total number of student athletes, which would be easy to get.

[1935] and then they'd take the total number of career positions in professional sports.

[1936] And they just go, oh, it's 300 to 1.

[1937] That's the math I would do.

[1938] That would be the fact, if you gave me this as a project.

[1939] Got it.

[1940] That's what I would do.

[1941] But what about, like, student athletes is such a range.

[1942] Mm -hmm.

[1943] You could be on varsity or you could be on JV.

[1944] Freshman.

[1945] Like, get over it.

[1946] You're not a student athlete if it's just on freshman.

[1947] No, if you're listening in your.

[1948] freshman.

[1949] Stick with it.

[1950] You could beat the odds.

[1951] Well, yeah, sure.

[1952] You beat the odds.

[1953] I beat the odds.

[1954] I didn't beat the odds.

[1955] Yes, you're employed as an entertainer.

[1956] That's almost impossible.

[1957] Okay, but I'm not a professional cheerleader.

[1958] Well, or are you?

[1959] How are we defining cheerleader?

[1960] I was thinking about that on the drive here.

[1961] I was thinking about some of the stuff I used to do.

[1962] With your body?

[1963] Yeah.

[1964] In.

[1965] cheerleading and how I would just never, ever do that now, even attempt to do it.

[1966] Right.

[1967] And I'll add, too, if someone caught you by the pussy, now you'd probably be very aware of it.

[1968] Yeah, sure.

[1969] Whereas in the past, you just shrugged that off.

[1970] I think I was still aware when it happened.

[1971] But in a not aware way, right?

[1972] Like someone brushed your shoulder.

[1973] Yes, but you just don't really have time to focus on it.

[1974] You're in a routine.

[1975] But now if you were just, doing it recreationally and someone caught you by the pussy, you'd be like, whoa.

[1976] Probably, yes.

[1977] I think it would just be a little different.

[1978] Probably.

[1979] Especially the anus.

[1980] They caught you by the anus.

[1981] I think it really wake you up now.

[1982] Well, sometimes you do.

[1983] It's part of it.

[1984] Oh, that's intentional sometimes.

[1985] So you catch them by the anus?

[1986] No, the butt cheek.

[1987] Yeah, butt cheek.

[1988] Sorry.

[1989] But certainly someone's finger stabbed your butthole at some point in that long career.

[1990] I'm going to say probably not because you're wearing balloon.

[1991] rumors and shorts.

[1992] Yeah, but they're like, they catch you and they have most of your butt cheek in their hand, but then they're, their fingers sticking out of it.

[1993] And they just poke it.

[1994] It's not like they insert it.

[1995] It's just like a quick blow to the - Yes, that probably happened.

[1996] Right.

[1997] And then you were like, eh, whatever.

[1998] You don't even like, eh, I don't know anyone, it would be offensive to even talk about it.

[1999] You know what I'm saying?

[2000] Oh, sure.

[2001] I would have wasted time.

[2002] Well, not even out of embarrassment.

[2003] Just like, get over it.

[2004] No, I know.

[2005] I'm saying, no one, why would you bring that up?

[2006] You're busy.

[2007] Yeah.

[2008] Performing.

[2009] Performing.

[2010] But now don't you think if you got a quick jab to the butthole with someone's index finger and or ring finger or middle finger for that matter, you would be like, ho!

[2011] I do think that is the case.

[2012] Yes.

[2013] Unless they're saving my life when they're sticking their finger up, then I probably wouldn't notice still.

[2014] Oh, oh, well, that's good to now.

[2015] Yeah.

[2016] Case I ever have to rescue you.

[2017] And I'm like, well, I would catch her, but I'm afraid I'm going to poke her butt with my index ring.

[2018] Don't stop yourself.

[2019] I won't.

[2020] I'll catch you.

[2021] Okay.

[2022] We'll worry about the rest later.

[2023] Okay.

[2024] So you know how we talk about this all the time?

[2025] The article about how papers don't want to put black people on the cover.

[2026] Oh, uh -huh.

[2027] Uh -huh.

[2028] And you always reference New York Times.

[2029] And I'm trying to find it and I can't find it.

[2030] And I'm just nervous because we keep saying New York Times.

[2031] And I don't know.

[2032] That's, that's very fair.

[2033] And also I'll add my point stands regardless of whether it's that.

[2034] The point is they're under -referred.

[2035] represented.

[2036] And is that an indictment of racism or is an indictment of empathy?

[2037] Yeah.

[2038] And who buys the paper?

[2039] Yeah.

[2040] That's the, that is the point.

[2041] Yeah.

[2042] There are facts in there that you're throwing in words that we don't know are true or not.

[2043] I'll try to figure out if I can, uh, I know.

[2044] I'd love to find, twin Kristen and I, if we can figure out.

[2045] I asked Kristen.

[2046] She doesn't know.

[2047] Okay, so you said that my dad moved from India to Atlanta, but he didn't.

[2048] He moved from India to Chicago, to Kansas City, to Atlanta.

[2049] Real tour of the Midwest.

[2050] Wow.

[2051] Yeah.

[2052] Okay.

[2053] So you said you're a mid -level comedian and you're not.

[2054] No, I am.

[2055] No, you're not.

[2056] By all measurements.

[2057] Like, my movies were mid -level successful and my TV shows are mid -level successful.

[2058] So aren't I a mid -level comedian?

[2059] No. Oh, let's not.

[2060] Let's not do this.

[2061] Oh, my God.

[2062] Oh, my God.

[2063] Pick your marfins and get out of here, okay?

[2064] All right.

[2065] I just think of top level.

[2066] You've got your Vince Vaughns, your Will Ferrells.

[2067] You know, anyone I'm leaving out, you're Seth Rogen's.

[2068] I apologize.

[2069] I like all you.

[2070] You know, they're like the top tier comedians, you know.

[2071] You're in there.

[2072] Well, God bless you.

[2073] Yes, you are.

[2074] You've worked with all those people.

[2075] What are you even saying?

[2076] Why do you hate yourself so much?

[2077] I don't.

[2078] I think appraising myself as mid -level is a very healthy perspective.

[2079] I'm like Robert Ori.

[2080] Oh, boy.

[2081] In the NBA.

[2082] I'm like Bob Ori.

[2083] If you're in the NBA, you're not mid -level.

[2084] Robert Ory is not a mid -level basketball player.

[2085] Would you agree?

[2086] Well, not nationally speaking.

[2087] But in the NBA, he's upper mid -level.

[2088] I think if you are in the NBA, you're already the top, top, top -level.

[2089] Then I guess within that, if you want to rank, you could.

[2090] Okay.

[2091] But that's equivalent to what's happening here.

[2092] Okay.

[2093] Well, then I agree with that argument.

[2094] Yeah.

[2095] All right.

[2096] That's all.

[2097] That's it?

[2098] Yeah.

[2099] Oh.

[2100] Okay.

[2101] Well, my God, Malcolm Gladwell.

[2102] Birthday came early for me. I know.

[2103] Been wanting them since day one.

[2104] I know.

[2105] Thank you, Adam Grant for connecting us.

[2106] Thank you, Adam.

[2107] You beautiful son of a gun.

[2108] Thank you.

[2109] And I've begun emailing Malcolm about cars.

[2110] Oh, fun.

[2111] Mm -hmm.

[2112] I'm going to see if I can't get something brewing.

[2113] What does that mean?

[2114] Just friendship -wise.

[2115] Oh, fun.

[2116] Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing that gaze of his playfully dance across my face a few more times.

[2117] Yeah, you love his eyes.

[2118] I do.

[2119] Now, back to Walk, like, in Egyptian, you know, there was also a popular song when I was younger.

[2120] She's got Betty Davis eyes.

[2121] Sure, I know that one.

[2122] And my father was nice enough to explain to me what that song meant.

[2123] Now, this is his interpretation.

[2124] But, you know, they were saying that the woman was very coked up, that she had big eyes, big, big, round pupils, like Betty Davis.

[2125] Oh, so it's actually a song about drugs?

[2126] Yeah, about a gal being all gacked up.

[2127] I don't like that as much.

[2128] It's less romantic, right?

[2129] It is, yeah.

[2130] Bummer.

[2131] Look, that's my dad's impression.

[2132] I don't stand by that.

[2133] Don't sue me, whoever wrote Betty Davis's eyes.

[2134] We should look up the lyrics.

[2135] It's Kim Carnes.

[2136] Okay There's verse She'll tease you She'll unease you That sounds like someone Coked up Yeah She's got Betty Davis She's got Betty Davis She'll also sounds like A seductress She'll expose you She'll expose you Snowes you Snowes She expose you When she snows you She needs you Okay She's got Betty Davis She's a Hoover Okay Blessings to Malcolm Yes Blessings to you guys Praise B Under his eye This is, I mean, it's almost Christmas time.

[2137] Yes.

[2138] I wish I had my jingler here on set, but we don't have it.

[2139] Do it with your mouth.

[2140] Jingle bell sound?

[2141] I can't possibly.

[2142] That was good.

[2143] All right.

[2144] Well, Merry Christmas.

[2145] Merry Christmas.

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