The Chris Cuomo Project - Malcolm Gladwell on How the “Tipping Point” Has Been Misunderstood & Misused

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Malcolm Gladwell (author, Revenge of the Tipping Point) joins Chris Cuomo for an in-depth conversation on the role of critical thinking in navigating today’s complex world. Gladwell discusses how the concept of the “tipping point,” which he popularized, has been misunderstood and misused in public discourse, and reflects on how the COVID pandemic has reshaped our approach to decision-making. Together, they examine the growing challenges of political polarization, the spread of misinformation, and why cultivating curiosity and skepticism is more important than ever in an age where quick judgments and surface-level solutions dominate. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Sponsors: AG1 Try AG1 and get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase at drinkAG1.com/ccp That’s a $48 value for FREE. Check it out. Cozy Earth  Go to cozyearth.com/CHRIS and use code CHRIS for an exclusive discount of up to 40% off. If you get a post-purchase survey, say you heard about Cozy Earth from The Chris Cuomo Project podcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you like to think about what you think? Do you like to have examples and context and stories completely change your understanding? Well, then that's why you love Malcolm Gladwell, right? I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. Gladwell's got a new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, with even more examples that show we don't really know what we think we know

about the things that often matter most. And this book, you know, we just came past 25 years of the original tipping point. And of course, Malcolm also gave us Blink and so many other articles and books that all go to the fundamental basis of our understanding. And I believe it's in such short supply today. We're dealing with an epidemic, in my opinion, of people not wanting to be critical thinkers, of wanting it easy, of wanting confirmation bias,

of just wanting more food that feeds the same notions they've had. And Malcolm Gladwell is the opposite of that. And that's why I'm such a huge fan and I am so happy to have him explain his new book, What's Going On and How He Feels About the Presidential Election as a Jamaican. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from AG1. AG1 works for me. That's why I'm doing the ads. And let me tell you, I take a lot of pills, alright, and I don't like pills, and I still

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When did you decide that we needed revenge of the tipping point? When did you decide that we needed revenge of the tipping point? Well it was when I was informed, reminded that it was the 25th anniversary of the original tipping point, my first book. And I was like, oh. And then I thought, first of all, I'm old. That was my first thought. Second thought was, well, I was originally just going to do a revision, just like update some stuff. Then I read it and I was like,

I don't really want to update it. I want to do a whole new book. It's like a sequel. I want to take these ideas and bring them all to the present because when I wrote that book, the idea that we would think about ideas and behaviors using the model of the epidemic was, I didn't invent it, but it was fresh. It was an interesting way for many people. People hadn't thought that way. Now it's old hat, right? Now we talk about things going viral, you know, we're memes, you know, we're

constant, the idea that ideas have contagious properties, we all know that. So, it seemed to me the task was very different. So, that's why I wanted to start again. Before I ask you about this one, over the years, have you felt that people have abused the phrase tipping point, and they apply it to places where it doesn't exist, and they overext to places where it doesn't exist, and they overextend it, and even often misunderstand what you were trying to explain in my book.

I think that's true of almost anything anyone writes. I mean, but I'm actually, I don't have a problem. Yeah, I mean, in my book Outliers, people misunderstood 10,000 hours, parents misunderstood the whole thing about hockey players and being born in January. But someone explained to me once, when you write a book, you put it out in the world and it

doesn't belong to you anymore. That was one of the best pieces of advice I ever got. It's fine. It's like people read a book their way and make it their own. Do you know how many boys have been held back because of you? Don't even get me started on this. Do you know, my wife and I,

we had this conversation twice. Once when he was young, after having read the book and I was like, oh, we shouldn't put this kid to school until he's like 11. And listen to Gladwell. And then during COVID, because he lost his freshman year to COVID basically. And there was a real talk about, during COVID because he lost his freshman year to COVID basically. And, you know, there was a real talk about, man,

should we have him redo it, you know, based on that principle? How do you feel about that, that you've had that impact? Well, that advice was, that whole argument was intended for kids who are struggling. So, you've got a learning disorder, single mom, growing up in the projects, you know, you've already got three strikes against you, and you're the youngest in your second grade class.

You've made, life is really hard for you. The world has made your life really hard. You should be held back here, right? That kid needs a break. If you're an upper middle class kid with educated parents and every advantage in the world, it's not for you. Like just, you know, there's a,

I live up near Hotchkiss. There, the parents of the kids, so these are kids with every advantage in the absolute world. The parents of the kids who so these are kids with every advantage in the absolute world. The parents of the kids who were the youngest in their class were holding their kids back a year so that the parents of the kids who used to be the oldest in their class held their kids back a year so that the parents of the kids who were originally the youngest held their kids back a second time.

So kids were graduating at like 20 from high school. This is ridiculous. It's your fault. It's your fault. It's my fault. I graduated from college at 20. Like that strikes me as being normal. Do these kids not want to get out of the house? Like what is the issue?

Well, listen, that is a new issue, right? The reaction formation of our generation to the one that raised us is a really open question. Yeah, I think that on average, we're closer to our kids, we're more familiar with them, we've done more with them, but let's put all the resiliency stuff aside for a moment. They're coming back, these kids, because the college degree doesn't give you a job anymore.

And there is a familiarity with home. I had my father lived in the state house when I was 18, right? He was in the executive mansion. I had no expectation of being welcome in that house again after I went away. Yeah, school. No way. It would never entered my mind. Yeah, I was surprised during the summer with that he if he wouldn't ask me, how long are you gonna be here? What are you doing? What are you playing? What are you doing? You know, like now my daughter, senior, super talented, last year of college,

I think she has every intention of being a stay at home daughter and you know, working on her music, she's an artist. I don't think she's giving it a second thought. What happened? You're not living in Albany. No, that's right. She's either gonna be here where we are right now. Like I may have to, the next time I talk to you, just give it a second thought. What happened? You're not living in Albany. No, that's right. She's either gonna be here, where we are right now.

Like I may have to, the next time I talk to you, we may have to be like in the other room because she may inhabit this one. Can I tell, this is total decide. Can I tell my favorite story about your dad? Please. I was not there, I met your dad years and years and years and years ago.

Like, I mean, not met him as in, I mean, he was in the same room that he was in. But somebody told me this. He's on the governor's plane, which back then was like a piece of crap. I mean, it was probably from the 40s, right? And they're in a serious thunderstorm. Like, and the plane is like shaking, things are coming loose. And there was a New York Times reporter, and I can't remember who it was, I'm botching, I think it might have been Kevin Sachs. I'm making it up. There was a New York Times reporter

who was getting very, very nervous. Like, this is gonna crash, it's over. And your dad is sitting at the front serenely, like, you know, reading Aristotle, whatever he would do, right? And then he turns, there's like a thunder clap, the plane goes, like, and everyone's like screaming and your dad turns around to this guy,

I think it was Kevin's dad, says, what's the matter, Kevin? Are you not in a state of grace? That is my father. Yeah. That is my father. And you know, I often think, wait think he would have loved it, Malcolm. He would have loved all of this

and what we're living through right now. He would have, you know, can we just talk to your dad for a second? Cause I was obsessed with your dad. Your dad and Daniel Moynihan. Now these are, many of your listeners will not remember these names probably as well as you and I do, but they're these, your dad's Italian Catholic,

Moynihan's Irish Catholic, they're New Yorkers, and they are, they're this certain kind of intellectual of Catholic, Jesuit-trained intellectual that I just, I am desperate for them to come back into public life. Lip the right. Well, I feel like the right kind of liberal principles, intellectual, educated, serious people who decided who went into public service because they,

they felt it was an obligation. So what they don't have anymore is it within those ethnic types for sure is the third component. The... No, I'm supposed to do this. Look at all that was given to me. My parents don't speak the language and I grew up in a back of a grocery store afraid the gypsies were going to take me. I'm supposed to do this because I can, because there's so many people who could be like me. We don't have that anymore. It is now a profession. You know, people who don't know my father well don't know

this. He was not a great politician. He did not like to make deals. He did not like to raise money. And he didn't want to own anybody anything. So it wasn't like a great fit, which is why Andrew had to carry so much water for him. Part of the untold story about my brother is my father was able to not do some of the things that you have to do because Andrew did it.

So can we just say like it's so Italian, the whole family, the whole family. Look, and we are. I mean, even I was really surprised. The disconnect I experienced when I got shit can from CNN because Andrew, I should, and frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, I

should have seen it coming. I don't know why I believe that things were going to be OK because my boss was saying they'd be OK and everybody was on the same page. I don't know why I believe that things were going to be okay because my boss was saying they'd be okay and everybody was on the same page. I don't know why I decided to believe that. It's probably some form of wishful thinking in the moment. But there was always an interesting disconnect where people from the cognoscenti were bristling and wringing their hands about my brother, and me, and the media, but helping him, but never regular people.

Regular people would all say the same thing, especially if they were ethnics, whether they were Jews or Italian or whatever. What are you supposed to do? Not help your brother? And I would then have to explain to them, well, it's not that simple. The reason they were upset at me is that they said, but as when I was a journalist,

you should do it on the show. No, I never did it on the show. I said I can't do it on the show, obviously, he's my brother. Then what are we talking about? The idea that I would, and I've heard this said to me so many times by so many different people that it restores my faith, not in how they see me, how they see each other.

I wouldn't like you if you hadn't helped him. If I had heard that you said, you know, he should have resigned, whatever it was, if you had had arms length with him. And when I was talking with Kara Swisher about it once, she does the podcast at Galloway, whom I love. Swisher's like, I wouldn't help my brother. I wouldn't help them.

If it would have compromised my journalism like that. That's why I didn't think it did compromise my journalism, but how could you not help your brother? I then talked to her brother and he says, yeah, she wouldn't help me. So it's just a different family experience. I mean, that's what you do. And it would have been interesting, but that's why they don't come into office. I mean, Malcolm, we can't get people like you in a public service anymore. You know what you're signing up for. You're gonna have teams of people like me

that are gonna look for somebody who didn't like how you treated them sometime 14 years ago, 18 years ago, 20 years ago. People don't wanna sign up for it. They're too smart to sign up for it. Yeah, on the family thing, I live upstate and there's a little plot of land next to mine that I wanted to buy

because I wanted to put my cousins want to build a house there. The guy been trying to buy this for other people, I'm trying to buy this land for years. The guy would never sell, never sell, never sell. Finally, I meet with him, sold Italian guy from Yonkers. We're like, you know, I'm eating this pickup truck. He's like got an accent straight out of the Sopranos. And he said, what do you want it for? And I said, I want to build, I know you've,

but I want to build these, my cousin's want to build a house next to mine. He goes, this about family? Of course. I was like, it's family. It's good that you're tight with family like that. It's good, it's nice. It's nice to have them nearby.

You got an understanding with each other, a connective tissue that you won't have with other people, if not just because of shared experience. No matter how divergent you've become in your own life, I think that there's value to it. And the older I get, the more I see that, like connecting back with people that even if decades have gone by,

I think there's value. So it takes us to perspective. Yes. And you are a thought leader. I have to be careful with you because I know you don't like to be lionized, but you help us understand how to think better and differently. How important, before we even get into very cool new applications for you to feel smarter

than you actually are when you need revenge of the tipping point because Malcolm just has such a special gift in making the abstruse accessible for us. Why do we need it? Where are we? Why do we need this? Why do we need critical thinking again and to look at things in context and understand? Well, I always say that we're experienced rich and theory poor,

meaning lots and lots and lots of things happen to us. What we lack are really the time or the inclination or the means to organize them, to make sense of them. So this person said this thing to me, well, what kind of context should I place that in? What's the historical context? What's the psychological concept? How can I explain?

It's that kind of explanatory language that I feel is missing from, well, I felt it was missing from my own life, which is why I like to do this kind of journalism. I'm really expanding things to myself for coming up with theories to help me make sense of the world. There's a chapter in this book, for example, about a community called Poplar Grove, which it's the perfect community.

I don't name it because it sort of muddies the issue, but it's this perfect town that had this unbelievable crisis that unfolds over many, many years involving its kids. And the problem, the fundamental problem is that there are parents, well-meaning upper middle class parents, trying to do the best for their kids and it's not working. And they don't understand why. They lack some kind of explanatory

mechanism, some theory, something to make sense of it. And so, because they can't make sense of it, they go into denial, they, you know, the pretence is not happening, they, whatever defense mechanism they go into. That's what happens when you don't have a way to confront what's in front of you or to make sense of what's in front of you. How do you find the examples? Well, that's the fun part. I kind of stumble into things. Someone, there's a chapter in there on

this really weird chapter on the Holocaust and how no one talked about the Holocaust until the late 70s, which doesn't, if you tell it to people, they say that's crazy. But then, and I heard that, someone told me this, like in conversation, you know that the Holocaust was like not even a term until, I was like, that can't be true. So then I went and got history textbooks, the kind of textbooks you would use in freshman college courses from the 60s and read them. These are written by Americans about the Second World War.

Chris, there is nothing about the Holocaust in those books, like maybe two sentences. It is the weirdest. So you're reading, they've got like 15 pages on the Battle of Midway, and they got like a whole thing about the internal political turmoil in the Japanese cabinet. And then they're like, and Hitler was rounding up communists, gypsies, and Jews and placing them in internment camps, period, new paragraph.

Meanwhile, Roosevelt was, this is one history textbook after another. So, I read, I started reading, I was like, oh my God, this is fascinating. Why? Right? So, I was very interested in that part of the book about why we tell the stories we tell, how is it that our understanding of things can suddenly shift? And the Holocaust is this perfect example of this. We went from never mentioning it

to it being a kind of central part of our understanding of what happened in the Second World War. And it happened like that. It's just, it's an amazing, weird story that, but it started with somebody saying, friend of mine, my friend Michael, saying to me, you know, and I don't know why he knew, oh, I know why he knew, because he read some book and it describes how Joseph Mengele, you know that he travels to America in the

1960s? Yes. You know, this is the weirdest thing in the world. And like, and he's just traveling around. Mengele, like what? Like the most infamous figure in the Nazi. And he was saying, I said, how is that possible that the archetypal war criminal, the embodiment of evil comes to America on

like a sightseeing mission in the 60s? And my friend was like, well, we have to understand that people just weren't talking about the Holocaust in the 60s. I said, that can't be true. That's what led me down there. Anyway, that's an example of it often starts with really random stuff like that. I'll read some line in a footnote in a book and I'll be like.

Then how do you figure out what the lesson is? Like with that now, I believe we have the opposite problem, right? Even one of the things that I get lefty pushback from, once in a while somebody will say, well, like the current vice president nominee of the Republican party, this guy can be our Hitler. This guy's gonna be Hitler, you gotta be careful.

Or this is how we got the Holocaust. And now I believe that it's often abused that way, that you cheapen how dangerous and potent the legacy is of that and the lesson of it when applying to things that don't meet that standard. And I see a danger in that. We've gone, it's become almost overused now. It's losing some of its- Why did we go from not talking about it to talking about it too much? Well, it became such a powerful, it became so culturally potent.

It stood for something. We all understood what it stood for. It embodied evil and it's just a really easy, cheap way to make your own cause seem, your own claim seem more dramatic than it really is, right? It was a Holocaust out there. It's just, it's a kind of intellectual laziness that is as opposed to, it just says,

if I use that term, that I will have, very easily have accomplished making a connection in people's minds. Why was it a secret? It wasn't that it was a secret. It was several things going on at once. I didn't hung out. I found this woman, an incredible woman named Rachel Lethkow.

She's in the book. I was trying to figure out very, very early on, there are no She's in the book. And I was trying to figure out very, very early on, there are no Holocaust museums in the United States, except for one that started in the early 60s in LA. And it's basically just a room, a bunch of survivors, camp survivors, who are taking English classes together at Hollywood High. There are all these, by the way, the stories of them, they're unbelievable. These are these people who came out of the camps, came to America, they all started businesses,

moved to LA, and they would get together. They're taking English classes at night in Hollywood High. And they have stuff that they own that they wanna get out of their house, but they realize they can't throw it away. The uniform they were wearing in Auschwitz, the prisoner's garb, the ID card, you can't live with that, right? But you also can't

destroy it. So they go to the local JCC and they say, do you have a room? Can we put this somewhere, like a closet? And those guys say, well, why don't you put it in a, like in our lobby, and people can come and see it. That's the first Holocaust museum in the United States, 1961, on Wilshire Boulevard. And it's just people, they have no expectations, they're doing anything to, they don't, they're not out there talking about the Holocaust, they just need a place to put their stuff. And then they discover that there is this enormous hunger

on the part of the public to learn about this. And because no one's been, the reason no one's been talking about it is they don't know how to talk about it. The survivors don't want to go back. They're trying to, they're young. The people who were survivors were young people, right? They came to America, they're in their 30s,

they're starting families and businesses. They can't go back. They saw their parents murdered. They don't talk to their kids about it. Why would you put your kids through that? We're in America, we're starting over. That's the mentality, right? They can't face it, they don't want to talk about it.

They want to start a new life. Then it takes a generation for them to face it. They don't want to talk about it. They want to start a new life. And then it takes a generation for them to understand it. Wait a second, there's a purpose to talking about it. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from AG1. Look, I use it. I think you should use AG1. Why? It has everything I need and I'm one and done. One scoop, glass of warm water

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packs with your first purchase. Just go to AG1.com slash CCP. That's a $48 value and you get it for free if you just go to drinkag1.com slash CCP. Check it out. How do you reconcile the appetite for the material that you put out? That kind of curiosity of people wanting to know and understanding and thinking and rethinking. And at the same time, we are in the midst of one of the most ignorance driven political and cultural points in our development. We don't care about truth, we don't care about science. Yeah. Nothing you say that I don't like is true. Yeah.

And I'll accept any basis for that, any basis of support. I only want to listen to who I agree with. I fear and I don't like who I do not agree with. Do you believe that, Chris? My feeling is there's a percentage of the population, whatever it is, 15 percent. Someone wrote me this hilarious email where his point was, 15 percent of the population at any given point in

history is just going to be off the reservation. Like you just have to accept that fact. And I feel like we hear from that 15 percent now, whereas in the 50s or 60s, they were there but they were like a lot quieter about it. It used to be the odd Lyndon LaRouche pamphlet that you would get on a corner. John Birch Society, whatever it was, some wacko.

But now they have Twitter accounts and we hear. But I have the opposite view because, and maybe it's because in promoting my books, I've spent so much time on the road, meeting with just random, and I meet random people, people come up to me and I chat with them all the time. My experience is that people are better educated than the other 85%. They're just not, they're better educated and better informed and much more reasonable

and look at all this stuff with the same view you have. Like, who are these crazy people? Like, that's not, like, you go to a school board meeting in some suburb of Dallas, they're not crazy. They're like, they care about the same thing, or in Minneapolis, or whatever you. So I don't know. I'm much more impressed with the kind of, I think people are kind of,

there's a kind of baseline reasonableness out there. It gets obscured sometimes, but I've tremendous faith in the kind of American public. I don't share this. I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm Canadian and I think all people are nice. I don't know what the reason is, but I'm not alarmed by this kind of. I have a chat.

There's a whole riff I do in the book on, which was very eye-opening for me, on Waldorf schools, it's a little part of a chapter. And it turns out if you look at, you know, Waldorf is this very distinctive, weird private school. If you look at California, state of California, for which we have perfect data, they have really good data on who gets vaccinated in elementary school. Basically everyone gets vaccinated

except for the kids who go to Waldorf schools. So if you do a, if you look in a community like West LA and you do the averages, the averages look suspiciously low and you would say to yourself, there are a lot of parents there who don't believe in, who are anti-vaxxers, kind of crazy. Then you look closer and you realize, no, no, no, no, no.

It's just the people who go to the Waldorf schools. Everyone else is getting their kids vaccinated. So then you realize it's not a West Side LA problem. It's not an LA problem. It's not a California problem. It's a Waldorf problem. Waldorf is its own little weird thing. There's some good parts to it

and there's some bad parts to it, but it's not typical. It's not like we didn't invent Waldorf. It's been around for whatever, 200 years. They're like this all over the world. There's a Waldorf school near me. They don't get their kids vaccinated. What are you gonna do?

Like, it's not a sign that America's going off the reservation. I don't know. So I tend to be much more like optimistic about this kind of stuff. Well, I tend to also because I believe, I don't know how else to be. I have to believe that the whole reason to engage

is because you can get to a better place and that there's virtue in it and that people are doing the right things for the right reason most of the time. That is not easy to sustain given the status quo right now. I totally get why all of the indicators, they've never been great, there was never great, ever since the Vietnam War, there was never great respect and regard for government anytime ever since that, nor the media, nor any of our institutions. But we are at a low of those numbers right now.

And I wonder how it all fits together. Like, I bet you there are gonna be people who wanna read this book by Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point, because they're gonna see super spreaders in the title and they're going to say, oh good, I hope he says that there's no such thing. That'll be great. There's one more reason that COVID was a total hack job and a fraud.

Yeah. Well, they'll get to the COVID chapter and they'll have a little pleasant surprise. I know I'm not out to, I've never tried to, my books are not intended to persuade I've never tried to, my books are not intended to persuade people to agree with me. My books are intended to provoke people's curiosity.

So like there's a chapter on COVID and that chapter, as you say, the chapter on COVID is all about the fact that we now realize in retrospect that 95% of the people who were infected with the virus were not in any danger of passing it on to anyone else. The virus is spread through the actions of a tiny, tiny, tiny group of people who, for reasons we don't entirely understand, emit thousands of times more

viral particles than everybody else, right? There's a small number of super spreaders. You might be a super spreader, Chris. You might be a super-spider, Chris. I might be a super-spider. We don't know. We don't really know who they are. Next time we will know who they are, and that was what the chapter is all about. But like, you know, you can reach,

I present evidence to support this argument. Is it, are the people who believe in the presence of these super-spiders, do they have a, can they say this with 100 percent certainty? No, they'll be the first to tell you. No, we've done some research that strongly looks like that's what's going on here, that one out of every 100 people did all the damage with COVID. But if you read that, and even if you don't buy it,

it does force you to rethink your, to change your model even a little bit about what COVID was. Right? It says, wait a second, maybe there's a reason, maybe the case for everyone being locked up at home was not as strong as we thought. Maybe if we're smarter about who is it who's posing a larger risk or who is it who's more vulnerable, maybe

the next time around we can improve this experience. The problem is we're not having that conversation. Have you noticed, talk about, not to compare to the silence of the Holocaust. Have you noticed that other than some opportunistic, some cherry picking of trying to punish people for what happened during COVID, there's no discussion about it.

There is no, what did we learn? There is no, well, now we're going to make some of this and keep this thing going or whatever. There's none of it. And I think the explanation is as simple as political fallout. People don't want to talk about it because neither side has an advantage over the other one. Now, the anti-vaxxers tend to break right, right now.

And the people who believe bad things about Fauci or the deep state or any of it, China, whatever, tend to break right. But it is the one thing that Trump doesn't really indulge. And the reason he doesn't indulge it is because he sees no advantage for him. He thinks the vaccine was his greatest. That's right. And he never says it.

And it's very interesting, because he loves to blow his horn, right? No good politician wouldn't. But he doesn't because of this small slice of people that he needs. And he has to keep in check. And it's the only time I've seen him booed. He's on stage with Bill O'Reilly in Florida. Yeah. And O'Reilly says to him, let's just clear this up once and for all. I know you got the jab. I don't you do that.

He said, don't you do that to me. Don't you, and then boo, you don't have anybody but me. They're all out to get you. I'm the only one, you can boo me. They start to laugh a little bit and it settles down. It's the only time I've seen that. And that's why you'll hear him say all kinds of stuff about what he did and how great he is.

You will not hear him brag about the vaccine. So how are we supposed to learn? How can we do what this book invites us to do and what we love to do? We love your books. We love it. We love them. We love your books. We love it. We love them. We love you. We love you for the gift

of feeding, inciting critical thinking. And yet, in the spaces where it matters most, we're doing it least by design. On COVID, can I tell you the story of something that I did? I didn't make it into the book because I couldn't figure out how to fit it in. But this goes to the point of why aren't we the kind of conversations we should be having about learning from the virus. So one of the things that we did learn is that the virus was spread indoors and it was spread indoors under very specific conditions, right? Bad ventilation, dry air, inadequate filtering of the air to remove the viral

particles. So next time around, you got to like open the windows, you got to bring in fresh air, you got to put in those big heavy thick filters, and you got to, you want the air to be not dry, but a little bit humid. So who is it? What institution, better than anyone else, does all those three things with their indoor air. Art museums. Why? Because the same conditions that make the air really, really safe during an epidemic

are the best conditions for preserving art. Art needs clean, humid air to dry and crack. So I called up the engineers at MoMA and I said, I wanted to come and talk to you about your HVAC system. They're like, oh my God, no one has ever called us out to ask about HVAC. HVAC, heating, cooling, you know, the ventilation. I was like, I hear you guys have like the greatest HVAC system in the world. They're like, well, they were like, we're modest about it, but it's pretty damn good. So I go over there and you know

you go in the new wing of of MOMA and it's like, you know, it's the David Geffen gallery or what you don't realize is when you go into a gallery above you there is like a double height floor, the size of the gallery, that is nothing but HVAC. Huge machines cleaning air, pumping in fresh air from the outside, huge humidifiers making sure the air in that thing, they keep the air in MoMA 24 hours a day between 40 and 60 percent humidity. Never higher, never lower. It's contractually written into. If you want to borrow a Rembrandt from something, it comes with a contract that says this must be in a room between 40 and 60 percent humidity.

The air inside MoMA is fantastic. So I said to them, in the middle of the pandemic, would the safest place to be indoors in New York City be the MoMA? And they're like, not only yes, not only that, the safest place to be in MoMA is in this gallery on the fourth floor in front of this painting called Icebox Number 9. So they take me to Icebox Number 9. They sit me there like, they like move me around. So I'm in their exact right spot. They're like, okay, in the middle of a pandemic,

you are the safest in the safest place in all of New York. It was so amazing. And like, these guys were so much fun because literally like thousands of reporters have come to MoMo over the years and no one has ever asked to hang out with the engineers. They were so cool. But I didn't, I really didn't fit it into the book. But my point is, that's the conversation you should be having. You want kids to, next pandemic, which we're gonna have again, it would be really great if the kids were in school. Well, you can prepare for that.

You gotta have humidifiers in the classroom. You gotta keep the windows open if you can. You gotta put in thick filters in there. And if you do that, and if you're mindful of the fact that probably most of your kids are not gonna spread the virus, you could create a safe space. You know, one, I would have checked to see how much of their staff got sick during COVID

and what kind of— Such an interesting question. It did not even occur to me. What kind of effect that their conditions have. I think it would be way lower. You know, what bothers me about it is, so all of this reticence is driven by self-interest of not having any blame put on you, controversy. The instinct is to mitigate how bad the virus was,

what needed to be done, we could have done so much less, should have never mandated the vaccine, vaccine doesn't even work, whatever exaggerated aspect of analysis you want. Then you get to the most painful unspoken part about COVID, which is that we've never had, there is long flu,

there are long what they call sequelae of viruses, but not like this. Yeah. And no one is talking about it. Now, I talk about it all the time because I have long COVID. Oh, you do. And it fucked with me for a while. How long?

Well, I'm still getting treated. I do, like today, after you, my Dr. Robin Rose is coming in. We have a sub stack where we just talk about what she's been doing for me, how she's trying to deal with spike protein and the micro clotting that I've dealt with and how it's affected different systems

and what she's seeing her practice. She's a double board certified GI internal medicine. She is now dominated with long COVID and maybe long backs, okay, or vaccine injuries, whatever you want to call it. Overrun, okay? And she's seen now, and she's very smart, but very skeptical. So she's like, are we just

identifying different ways to get to the same place of other maladies that we've already known, and that everything is complicated, so this is just one factor in a company. But then we started to get all the excess mortality rates after COVID, and now you have people who aren't supposed to die from

things who are dying from things. And the rate is relevant, if not staggering. We don't talk about it. You don't hear the government talking about it. Yeah. When I have people on right, left, reasonable, they all say the same things, which is really frightening to me. Whenever I realize that whenever I start hearing the same answer,

it means that nobody's advancing their understanding anymore. So now all I hear is, look, long COVID is real, and we've got to keep looking at the data and seeing how you know, how best to treat these folks. We have no treatments for any of them and very few of them are in the same bucket. That's my problem with the reductive analysis, which I deal with all the time. People say, well, if you could go back now, would you still tell people they're supposed to take the vaccine? I say, yeah, because the government was still telling me you're supposed to take the vaccine. Yeah, but don't you think you should have been as skeptical of the government?

On what basis? Well, isn't that what you always do? Do you just take the government at their word? When they know something that I don't, what am I supposed to do? Ask questions of them of how they know, right? I mean, that's not, journalism isn't, you know, Malcolm says this about the Waldorf School.

I say, yeah, I don't believe it. Yeah, that's not, you know, I'm gonna tell people that may not be that. I don't even know what your basis is for it. But that's where we are in our discussion. And as a result, we're not talking about this and it matters. And I keep seeing it pop up in my own life

with people around me. My daughter won't get mad at me about this. Our 21 year old is crazy talented, right? She's great. She's got an album coming out. All herself produced, so great. She gets this condition where basically her blood pressure goes up.

She's 21, crazy healthy, high blood pressure. It's as likely as not that it's from spike protein. And we had the good fortune of having doctors who are looking at it this way to look at the data for us and look at the testing. But otherwise we wouldn't have known. And we just have a 21 year old, a 21 year old who has high blood pressure

and it's easily regulated, probably will become lifestyle driven and she's gonna be fine. But that would have never happened. We don't talk about it. And that's one of the reasons I was so pumped to get you to come on because I believe while an optimist, though maybe not

of Gladwellian proportions, I think we are losing this ability to the convenience of consensus within our circles, parties, factions, getting away from this. I don't want to know that super spreaders aren't what I thought they were. I don't want to know that I was wrong aren't what I thought they were. Yeah. I don't want to know that I was wrong about anything. I want to be right and I want you to tell me that I'm right. I feel that we're losing to that. You say no.

Well, I mean, I also don't think it's a global thing. I think that there are subjects on which each of us has our own set of subjects where we are pretty committed to our positions for whatever emotional or, I mean, there are some hot button things where you get me going. I don't listen, you know, I stop listening to reason. I will just, if you said a couple of keywords, I would go for two hours.

And the other things where I have an open mind, you know, it's very hard to be, so I think what's happened is that- But you don't go for two hours on the basis of a vibe or of what someone told you. Maybe not. I don't know. I get, I mean, I'm a huge,

you know, a huge track and field fan. There are subjects about running that I just, you know, I'll just go on and on and on and on. I had very strong feelings coming out of the Olympics about many things. What bothered you? How pumped were you to watch that guy win the 1500 when they boxed him in like that?

Cole Hocker, yeah, yeah. I was cheering for the Norwegian, but the, well, I mean, we shouldn't, Chris, we shouldn't, we shouldn't probably wade into it, but the discussion around that Turkish box or the Algerian boxer was... That's a great example of what I'm talking about. It was very troubling to me because there were a clear set of facts and a big percentage of those who chose to weigh in on that chose to ignore the facts. Yes.

And quite apart from what conclusion you want to draw from that, you know, this was a very specific kind of case which presents difficult issues, and there was stuff written on that that was so stupid I wanted to tear my hair out. I'm like, it's just like, it's, anyway, I shouldn't. But here's the thing, you have to, not because you wanna rebut it, win the argument,

tell them that they're wrong. Someone's saying it's the process because it keeps repeating itself. But she's got X, Y chromosomes, it's a guy. Well, no, it's more complicated than that. And forget about the fact that she's in a country that doesn't allow trans, but you go to identify, what is your problem?

You don't want guys fighting women, right? Okay, I get it. It happens very, very, very, very, very rarely. You wanna do the one is too many. Okay, now we're into the problem of, well, there's a lot of other ones where we've got a lot more than one where you don't give a shit about that dynamic,

but you care about it here out of really political convenience. Okay fine still Then I read into it because it bothers me that it wasn't a clean kill on it Where always raised as a female always fought as a female. There's nothing there because she had the XY thing So then I look in to the organization that flagged her. That organization is a sham organization that is run by Russia and funded by Russian oligarchs and only dropped a dime on that woman

after she beat a Russian fighter. So I build all of this into my analysis of it. But I forgot that the people that I was trying to convince that this is not your case, this is not what we're talking about, what you're talking about has its place, but it's not here, they like Russia now. And they feel that Russia has been given a bad name in the efforts to go after Trump, so saying, look what the Russians did with this. This is a clear case of what they do.

They don't have any problem with Russia. So it landed flat. And that issue worked. It worked. And it totally divided along those lines. There was really only one moment I saw where nobody had anything bad or aberrant to say, and I haven't had the guts yet to figure out how to do it on my show.

But it is the moment of the pole vaulter who catches his junk on the bar on the way over and winds up the bar falls off because of him and how he lost, but he's really the biggest winner of the Olympics because of what it says about him. And I didn't know if the video was doctored or not. But when I first saw this pop up on my Instagram search or whatever it was, I was like, that's a fucking weird thing. Then I saw it again. Then I saw it again. Then I saw 38 million views this thing had in like three days. I haven't even seen the guy be interviewed yet,

which is very interesting. But that's the problem, Malcolm, is that there's a set of facts that they chose to ignore. Yes, that's why Kellyanne said alternative facts. Not that there's facts and then what I'm going to pretend is facts. I'm going to cherry pick and ignore all others. That's where we are, which is the opposite of what you teach us. And yet, we all want this and apparently that at the same time. That's what I don't understand. Yeah.

What did I get wrong? What did I just say that offends your sense of... We might have different... Let's leave it. We might have different perspectives on the Algerian boxer. Did you believe she shouldn't be allowed to fight? Well, if she was a runner, she would have not been able to. If she was a cyclist, she would not have been able to. If she was a swimmer, she would not have been able to. Boxing was this weird situation where, you know, you're allowed,

if you're a... The IOC said to all of the sports federations, you make your own rules. Right. And so most sports federations say that if you are what's called DSD, which is what she is, you're not allowed to compete with biological women. But because the boxing federation, for reasons you point out, it's like hopelessly corrupt, run by, they suspended them, and the IOC didn't have a clear set of rules.

Right. So they were caught, they were embarrassed. They didn't have a policy in place and they didn't know what they were doing. And they kept on, they were like, the press conferences are all over the place. The plain fact is like have a, have a thought out position on what, what you, how you feel in your sport about a DSD athlete. They didn't have a clear position in place

for this situation. So they, this was a fiasco of their own making. Yes, I agree. The other sports, like in running, in running she doesn't compete, in cycling she doesn't compete, in swimming she doesn't compete, in a whole bunch of, a long list of sports,

they're absolutely clear about it. But why would the rule be anything else? Look, I get it. I get what people are saying about it, you know? And sometimes they'll say, do you think a guy like you should be, you know? It's like, well, you know, I don't think, I was like, you know, I think their point is more salient than just pointing at a 225 pound guy.

That's not the point. It's just that there are genetic differences that create an imbalance of advantage. Why would you have any other position? If you, unless you can find a sport where the physical advantage, I mean, look at the size of that boxer. She was much bigger than the people that she was fighting. She was obviously hitting a lot harder than they do. Well, men and women of the same, if you take a man and a woman of the same weight, the man on average will hit 162% harder than the woman. Yeah, I believe it.

It is sizable. Now, I'm not saying that I don't know for a fact there are women that are considerably smaller than you that would absolutely fuck me up in short order. That's what I do. I train in self-defense and I know that that's a fact. That doesn't make it okay if we were going to go into the cage at the same time. And again, that's what I'm talking about. It's not about the political position for me.

It's not. It's not about the party, although I do believe that they are the root of the problem, that's what I'm talking about. It's not about the political position for me. It's not. It's not about the party, although I do believe that they are the root of the problem, that the two-party system is a binary battle to the bottom, and not just because it's alliterative, that it only works for them. Biden and Trump is only a satisfactory choice for those two parties. Yeah. On any other scale, you'd be like,

we got to be able to do better than this. How is a country that now has, Gladwell can't be president, right? Because he's a Canuck. But where you got people who are that smart and that concerned, and this is what we wind up with, we got to be able to do better. They're fine with it. Both of them are fine with it.

Yeah. Why? Works for them. One of us is going to win, and the basis is that the other one's worse. That's what I'm saying. That is inconsistent with this, Why? Works for them. One of us is going to win. And the basis is that the other one's worse. That's what I'm saying. That is inconsistent with this. And yet we want both.

Well, but we're talking about different people. We're not talking about 15%. We're not talking about 15%. You know, you talk about the boxer thing, you're going to be right up around 50. Now I believe that, again, I believe in the inclusiveness of it. I get it.

I believe that a lot of this is prejudicial. I do, and unfair. I do. But I think when it comes to sports, this is weak ground for the diversity movement, and that you can't have someone who's obviously more powerful by genetics fighting against somebody. And I get it, she was a girl.

I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it. But it's not fair, and that's why she's so fucking good, you know, or it's a big reason for it. I get it. But we see that in everything now, where they're constantly finding an example. And, you know, I'm complicit, right? Being in the political media, we do this.

One of the biggest mistakes we made is using social media as Vox Populi. Yeah. That is a huge mistake. I remember when it happened. That's how old I am. I was on TV one day, and I said something about someone being a mouth breather. I was like, well, this guy's an idiot.

I mean, he's basically, he's just a mouth breather, you know, right there saying what he said. Going about my day. Somewhere in the late afternoon, I get a phone call from PR people. Did you say this morning that someone was mouth breathing? I said, yeah, I did. Were they a mouth breathing? I said, what do you mean were they a mouth breathing? Yeah, the guy was an idiot, what he was saying.

Now it turns out that there is an organization of people who have a specific malady where they have to breathe through their mouth. And they were very offended by this. Yeah. Well, I said, Oh, okay. I said, how do you know this? Well, they've been coming after you on Twitter.

Oh, I look, 75. I say there are 75 posts, responses to posts, reposting of posts, 75. You want me to apologize? Well, yeah, we just got a call from the Daily Beast and from some other outlet. They're asking questions. I mean, is this really the hill you wanna die on?

I was like, I remember at that time thinking, this is gonna end really badly. 75 people get you to pick up the phone and call me that I have a problem with the country. And I remember it was like in 2012 or something like that. And I remember that. And that's where we are now. Hey, Malcolm, that thing you said on the podcast, man, you're gonna have to clean it up. Why?

Well, this is like 3000 people that have said something about it. 3000. I sold 300,000. I don't read my comments. So I'm saying... But I'm saying that's where we are now. I'll tell everyone who does revisions to me,

we don't read the comments. It's not useful. If somebody has something to say, they'll come up and tell you. But how do we get to this place, Malcolm, and what do we do about it where at once critical thinking, and I'm not telling you anything you don't know. I mean, you will become a massive figure in our culture for good reason.

I really am very, very, I would say honored, you're gonna get upset, but I, it really matters to me that I'm having time to spend with you and talk to you and that I've absorbed what you do and it matters to me. And yet we are flying down the highway of half thought on a regular basis with our most important decisions. Yeah. Reconcile.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll give you an optimistic thought, which is, at any given moment in history, there's always the kind of thoughtful people move around. the kind of thoughtful people move around. You know, if we're in the 17th century, the thoughtful people are Jesuit priests. If we're in the Industrial Revolution, the thoughtful people are steam locomotive engineers in the South of England. If we're, you know, in the smart people in 1945

were at Los Al animals, right? And I just feel like some professions, some areas of our society go up and some go down at any given moment. Right now, a hell of a lot of really, really smart people are in Silicon Valley or working out of NIH or, and it's like, I sort of feel like the best way to look at it is to take the big view and say, things might

be, we might be suffering in Congress, but we're not suffering 10 miles down the road at NIH, or we're not suffering. You got to pick a different example. NIH has been destroyed by what happened. I'm a, I used to cover science with the Washington Post. I love NIH. I mean, do I think they should have twice the budget? Yes. I once gave a talk to a group of science funders,

and I was like, right now you guys ask for whatever it is, 30 billion from Congress. Why don't you ask for 60? It's just a preposterously small sum of money to spend on basically all of our biomedical research, ask for 100. That's why they get so tied to private industry. Yeah. It's ridiculous. We spend this much on airplanes.

You don't think it's as important to do medical research as it is to buy airplanes? I told them to ask for 100 and settle for 80, and it'd still be twice. I was like, just go big. Why are you guys going in and you're at 30 and you ask for 31? Why? Ask for 100. I think you're right.

Nobody in Congress would remember that the old number was 30. That's right, the old line that's a rounding error. But now I think you'd have a hard time because they believe it's all propaganda. I don't. I mean, look at Fauci as kind of a spirit animal of what I'm talking about right now.

He goes from being like a bobblehead American figure, now he is like hated by half of the political spectrum. Yeah. And the facts never changed. I don't know. I'm like, I just have so much more confidence in, like I said, maybe it's my Canadian upbringing. I just was, I feel like I just was, everywhere I go, I meet really interesting, thoughtful people.

I think part of the thing is, as a journalist, and you know this, as a journalist, one of the things you learn is not to take what people say at face value. That I did an experiment a couple of years ago where I decided that I would love bomb all my critics. So if anyone ever sent me something nasty, an email, a text, whatever,

some criticism or wrote something nasty, I would write them and I would be incredibly nice, accept the criticism and compliment them back. I did this experiment. It has worked so amazingly well that now this is all I do. I never say nasty back. I say, thank you, that was incredibly thoughtful. I've learned a lot from blah, blah, blah,

and then I come on. What I discovered is that most people who say nasty things, they didn't intend to say nasty things. What they really wanted was to have a conversation, and they just weren't very good at it. There's a guy in the bar who goes up to the girl and they have a lovely, warm, wonderful person and they have a bad pickup line. They're that person. These are people with bad pickup lines.

They think they want to have a conversation with you, Chris, about something, and they come in, and they think the best way to come in is to come in and say something really obnoxious about you. Fredo, you're a crook? Now we're going to have a conversation? Yeah, but they don't mean that. They're not nasty people.

They just don't know. We are unusual as journalists in that we are trained in the arts of interviewing and conversation. That's our job, right? Most people in the world, that's not their job. They know other things that we will never know. They are experts in areas we can't even fathom. But talking to a stranger is not something

that they ever have any practice at, and they're bad at it. So they send you the tweet that says, you're an asshole, and they don't mean you're an asshole. They mean that I read something you wrote and I was mystified by it. And if you go to follow up and you say, oh, that's interesting, what did you mean by that? Then they're like, oh my God, you responded to me. And then they'll write a real response.

I didn't buy that, I thought you should have done this. And then I realized, oh, actually that person maybe has a point. And then it's a real conversation. This has happened to me so many times now that I strongly believe that a huge percentage of what looks like socially destructive conversation online is nothing like that at all. It's just people who don't know how to open a conversation.

So where do you believe we are in terms of the status quo right now? Like when you look at like, because the house is on fire in the media, okay? In our politics, right? Which becomes this kind of, at once, somebody grew up in politics, you'd think I'd know better than this.

I believe that my father would say politics is people. Politics is people, politics is messaging, politics is action. If you don't do it, eventually you're not gonna be able to say it and it doesn't matter how often you say it. Now I would argue that we're living through a different period right now where you can just say it a't matter how often you say it. Now, I would argue that we're living through a different period right now where you can just say it a lot and people think you did it.

But I look at it and I realize that nowhere else in your life do you allow what you allow in your politics. Nowhere else. Nowhere else do you settle the way you do in politics where you choose the less worse of two options? Nobody says, I'm going to date this person because they're less ugly than the other person. Yeah, well, remember what I said before about how the talent moves around? At any given moment, it's in different places.

When I think about politics, that's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is to say, the talent's moved around, and right now, there's a lot of real talent in the state houses. People talk about like, you know, the Democrats deep bench. I did this, I interviewed Westmore out in Maryland. I love Westmore. All right.

You can't sit down with Westmore and tell me that there's something terribly wrong with American politics. Like, you can't. Like, or, you know, Whitmer in Michigan, or like, there's just not where, right now, he's not where he should be. He should be one rung up. Right now, he's like, we just got to wait five years,

and then 10 years. He's governor of the state, not bad first job. I know, but like, I would feel better about the world if he was in the Senate, or if he was someone's vice presidential candidate or even president candidate. That's going to happen eventually. It's just not there yet. Right now, but right now, you and I could sit down and we could find at the state level, I am sure, on both sides of the aisle, 20 people who we thought are, think are first-class

talents. Absolutely. Just where the talent is. It's just, it's just, and we just got to wait it out. Like those people will rise up. There's a generation that's moving out that are tired and they've run their course, and they were blocking the way for a next generation. The next generation is, it's like, I'm a big NBA fan. There was, you know, 15 years ago,

whatever it was in the NBA before the LeBron era, it was like there was not a lot of talent in the league. You could look at the NBA and you could say, remember those slugfests in the garden in the 90s? This is basketball, 8179 and everyone fouls out and it's just hacking Patrick Ewing every five minutes. Now, you'd think basketball wasn't over.

It's just the talent was eight years old, right? LeBron was still in elementary school. So you think it's talent driven, not ethos, tone, culture. Yeah, I always, I, yeah, I do think, I just think sometimes, sometimes we get unlucky in the wrong people. The wrong generation is ascendant

and the people are in the wrong places. Has Gen X arrived? I always forget which one they are. They're like- So let's say us, like somewhere between like 48 and 62, let's say. Well, the ascendancy of GenX has been delayed because the old guys have stayed on too long, right? Dine Feinstein, Biden, Trump, all these people

just were passed or sell by date. I think that's, in another generation, you would never have had somebody, you know, All these people just were passed or sell by date. I think that's, in another generation, you would never have had somebody, you know, running for president, whether they were gonna be in their mid-80s by the time they got out. That's like Soviet Union style stuff.

I guess Obama is the only Gen X president we've had. He's still younger than everybody else. I know, I know. He's hilarious. But you know, but it's interesting though, it's like, wow, you think about if talent is gonna dominate them, why do you lose the good talent? And then we have rules that were supposed to be in place

to allow talent to be in there to fruition. Now they just allow them to stay too long. It's interesting. When people are thinking about reading Revenge of the Tipping Point, why are you happy that this book is available for them? I'm happy because there are like whatever, nine chapters in that book, three you'll agree with, three will totally take you by surprise, Three will make you throw the book across the room. That's a good book.

What are you most excited about that you think is going to happen? Related to the book or in the world? Both. I would really, for an incredibly random, I'm going to answer this very simply, for an incredibly random personal reason, I want Kamlo to win. You wanna hear my reason? Yes.

Her dad, Donald Harris, grew up in the same town where my mom went to high school, Brownstown, Jamaica. So I was like, that's really interesting. In fact, he used to go to the church, like literally across the street from where my mom was in his house. So she would have seen him, the roughest image, seen him like on every Sunday morning. So I talked to my mom about it. I was like, I should call him up. I said, call him up. And I say, Donald Harris, you know, my mom's from Brownstown. He goes, smack him, gobble him. I said, yeah.

You know, I've never told anyone this. When I was at undergrad, I went, I've never told anyone this. When I was at undergrad, I went to undergrad at the University of West Indies in Kingston, my faculty advisor, I went to him and I asked him, what should I study? Because I had all kinds of ideas and my faculty advisor said, you should study economics because you're good at that. So I did and that's why I moved to Berkeley and, you know,

met Kamala's mom and had Kamala. Who was his faculty advisor at the University of West Indies in 1960? My dad. No way. Yes. So I in a totally self-serving, self-regarding way regard the Gladwell family as responsible for Kamala Harris. If my dad doesn't tell him to go to Berkeley to study economics, he doesn't meet her mom and she's not born, and we might not get the president that we're going to get in November. So if she wins, it's on us.

The Gladwells, my mom's still, I want my dad's daddy passed, but she should invite my mom. My mom should be on the dais on an election night and they should hold her up. She's got a walker, but she can take one free hand. And she- She's got a walker.

By the way, my mom is so invested in this. So you have no idea how much Jamaican, the Jamaican ladies of the world are so down for Kamala. It is unbelievable. So how did she respond to Trump saying she's Indian? No, no, no. My mom's like, she's not buying that bullshit. No, Kamala is Jamaican.

If you're Jamaican, I once met the great Jamaican sprinter, Shelley Anne Fraser Price. Oh, really? Yeah, I met her and I said, I said, Shelley Anne, I'm half Jamaican. She goes, there's no such thing as half Jamaican. You got a drop of Jamaican, you're Jamaican. She goes, there's no such thing as half Jamaican. You got a drop of Jamaican, you're Jamaican.

So Kamala is Jamaican and the Jamaicans are going to go nuts on election night if she wins. It's going to be, it's like Jamaican ascendance, it's going to be Usain Bolt times 10. It's going to be epic. Well, it would be huge for the island, that's for sure. I think it's important for us too. I had a real struggling match, then I'll let you go. Governor Shapiro is an extraordinary public servant. I couldn't get past why they didn't pick him.

And I don't believe it's because he met Kamala Harris and they didn't pick him. And I don't believe it's because he met Kamala Harris and they didn't get along. They've known each other a while, okay? And her people were pushing him. You didn't see them once tell the media not to say that Shapiro is a front runner. Walls was nowhere in the competition. I'm not criticizing Walls, it doesn't matter. I think it was a good choice for that ticket because the party seems excited by it

and that's all that really matters. It is complete agita to my political gut to say, black woman is president, Jewish guy VP. What do you think? I say, no, you're asking way too much of the American people, You're asking too much. But isn't that exactly why you don't give into that and you do it anyway?

Now I'm not saying it's because he was Jewish. I think if anything, it had more to do with his, the assertiveness of his stance on Israel, if it's anything. Although I don't believe that they're really catering that much to the left flank of that party, because they know that's not how they win the elections. But it bothered me, and it is also an example of this dynamic that I keep seeing that bothers me so much, which is where the curiosity of wanting to expand and wanting to know and wanting to seek,

which is so American, is in conflict with not wanting to do those things. The left rained on me so hard for suggesting, I was like, I just want to know, why wasn't Shapiro seen as safe? Walls was seen as safe. They said it, they used the word. Why isn't he safe? Yeah. He's going to run in four years and win.

But maybe. But why isn't he safe? And why can't I talk about it? And why do I have to give beat up for saying it? Would you go for Shapiro Westmore and... Look, Westmore, I don't know what you want in a leader that the guy doesn't have. The guy is amazing. I also have a very, very big soft spot for Christie Whitmer too. I just think there's so much talent. It's my point. There's so much talent. There's like a million people to choose from.

We haven't even scratched the surface. Like I said, we come with 20 more names. You cannot despair under those circumstances. I never despair. I just worry. There's a difference. Malcolm Gladwell, thank you for being you and thank you for being here. Thank you. It was really fun. Malcolm Gladwell makes us better

if we are willing to be better. This book is gonna do very well. I actually think that while it won't have the surprise factor of the first one, because no one had ever really read anything like that, this one actually plays on things I think matter even more to us than the initial effort did, especially in my opinion, the COVID stuff and also what we understand about social tendencies

and what we should learn from them. Of course, we're not having the right conversations, but this one will help. Thank you very much for joining me here at The Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for subscribing and following. Thank you for being with me on News Nation at 8p and 11p every weekday night. If you love the pod, but you don't love the ads, fine. Five bucks a month. Subscribe to the sub stack. And listen to this, five bucks, you get the podcast ad free. That should be it. That's enough of a value proposition.

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