Malcolm Gladwell On Creativity, Failure, and the Revenge of the Tipping Point

Michael Gervais (0:00)

Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high performance psychologist. Today's episode is a special one. It wasn't recorded in our Mastery lab, but we did it live from Balboa Theater in San Diego for a live Talks LA event, where I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with one of the most influential thinkers of our time, Malcolm Gladwell. This conversation was just so much fun. I mean, we went places. We explored his writing process, the lessons he learned from his father about effort and resilience and big questions about the future, like the real impact of AI and the time it takes to fully understand emerging technologies. We also dive into Malcolm's latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. Overstories, superspreaders, and the rise of social engineering. I just want to say that this was one of those wonderfully surprising conversations because I want you to stay tuned for the first bit. I think you'll be really surprised about where Malcolm and I go. I think you're going to love it. It's full of emotions and I'll keep it there. And this whole thing was electric. And it's just, you know, it's fun to do it with a live audience. There's a different type of thing there. But I'm excited for you to listen to the way that he shapes his words, where he's coming from, the emotions and the thinking that collide. Like, I think you're in for a real treat. I know I was when I was with him. When I listened back, I was like, oh my God, this is so good. So with that, let's dive right into this incredible conversation with the one and only Malcolm Gladwell.

So you've been blazing the trail of mastery for some time now. And what I thought that we would do is just have a conversation about how you work, your big ideas that you have, and how you think about the future. And so, when I think about applying the psychological lenses on you, it gets really interesting, because you're a really interesting person. So, let's start at the beginning. How do you, how did you come to write?

Malcolm Gladwell (2:29)

How did I come to write?

SPEAKER_3 (2:31)

Yeah.

Malcolm Gladwell (2:34)

Well, my mom was a writer, and I thought that was kind of cool.

I didn't really have, you know, I'm, and I continue to this day, I'm not much of a planner. So, as a kid, I wasn't that kid who said, when I grow up, I want to be X. I don't think I ever said the phrase, when I grow up, I want to be. I, and I to this day never talk about what I want to be when I grow up. I, so I didn't really, I kind of, everything I, I've, everything I've ever done, I've always stumbled into. And I, I kind of stumbled into writing. I, I got a job in writing out of college just entirely by accident. I was trying to get a job in advertising, failed.

It was, I can't, a friend of mine was a, I had no, it was senior year of college. I had no job prospects. But I was untroubled by this for reasons I don't know why. And a friend of mine used to subscribe to this conservative magazine called The American Spectator, which I'd never heard of. And he said to me one day, I know you don't have a job lined up, but they're advertising for an assistant managing editor. And I had never read this magazine ever. And so I wrote away to get the application. And the application came back a couple of pages. And the big question was, why do you want to work at The American Spectator? Of course, I'd never read it. So I just put, doesn't everyone want to work at The American Spectator? And I got the job. And that was the beginning of my career in journalism. It just seemed like a lark.

Michael Gervais (4:26)

You are clever. You are really clever. So it's really refreshing to hear you announce that you didn't have this grand plan. And here you are one of the more influential thinkers and writers of our time that you didn't have this idea that one day I'm going to, and I think that what we see for our children now is that we are hammering them on, where do you want to go to school? What do you want to do when you grew up? And we're asking the question more about what and where, as opposed to who do you want to be?