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Malcolm Gladwell’s life has changed; he has not
On Tuesday, a new Malcolm Gladwell book comes out. And if history is any guide, it will be a bestseller. “They’re stories about ideas,” he said. “They have characters. They have plots. I’m usually trying to say something about the world.”
His first book, “The Tipping Point,” published in 2000, established the Gladwell recipe: he explores a theme through anecdotes and little-known scientific studies. “‘Tipping Point’ was about the epidemic as an incredibly useful way of understanding how ideas move through society,” Gladwell said. “And epidemics have rules. Let’s learn the rules, right?”
His seven New York Times bestsellers have sold 23 million copies in North America alone. His fee for corporate speeches is $350,000. His fans have downloaded a quarter-billion episodes of his podcast, “Revisionist History,” and he founded a company called Pushkin Industries to produce it.
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In other words, Gladwell has come a long way from the small Canadian town where he grew up, son of a British father and a Jamaican mother, whom he describes as “subversive,” someone who would write notes to excuse her son from class with a blank space. “I would just fill out the date,” said the man who skipped a lot of school.
He attended the University of Toronto, but his best education was the ten years he worked for the Washington Post. “I knew nothing about newspapers,” he said. “I was so raw. I was 23, I think, or 24. Bob Woodward was two rows away from me. I learned at the feet of the greatest journalists of my generation.”
In 1996, Gladwell joined The New Yorker. He wrote about why, in the 1990s, New York’s crime rate plummeted in an article called, “The Tipping Point.” A book followed. It introduced a recurring Gladwellian theme: hidden patterns in the way the world works.
He’s a world-class contrarian, about college (“You should never go to the best institution you get into, never; go to your second or your third choice. Go to the place where you’re guaranteed to be in the top part of your class”); about working from home (“It’s not in your best interest to work at home. … If you’re just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live, right? Don’t you want to feel part of something?”); about football (“I think the sport is a moral abomination”).
Gladwell says he enjoys being provocative: “Of course!” he said. “I like poking the bear. I mean, journalists should poke the bear.”
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Gladwell’s fans love his storytelling, and the A-ha! moments they bring. His critics, on the other hand, have described his writing as “generalizations that are banal, obtuse, or flat wrong,” and “simple, vacuous truths [dressed] up with flowery language.” “I’m with the idea that not everyone’s gonna like my work,” Gladwell said. “100% of people don’t like anything.”
In a 2021 “Sunday Morning” interview, Gladwell said, “I would rather be interesting than correct.” He called that “an overly provocative way of saying things! No, I think what I meant was, if I turn out not to be right, I’m not devastated. I accept that as the price of doing business.”
Gladwell often turns his mistakes into new chapters or podcast episodes. In “The Tipping Point,” he explained that New York’s crime drop was the result of “broken windows policing.” As he described it, “Little crimes were tipping points for big crimes.” But that philosophy led to New York’s policy of “stop and frisk.”
“Doing 700,000 police stops a year of young Black and Hispanic men is deeply problematic,” Gladwell said. “We were wrong. I was part of that. I’m sorry.”
Which brings us to the new book, “Revenge of the Tipping Point.” “The original ‘Tipping Point’ is a very optimistic, rosy book about the possibilities for using the laws of epidemics to promote positive social change,” he said. “In the last 25 years, I spent a lot of time thinking about the other side of that problem, which is, what happens when people use the laws of epidemics in ways that are malicious or damaging or self-interested?”
Little, Brown & Co.
The book’s stories range from topics as obscure as cheetah reproduction, to stories as big as the Holocaust. He writes that almost nobody talked about the Holocaust, or even called it that, until NBC aired a miniseries called “Holocaust” in 1978. “And what changed happened like [snaps fingers]. I mean, it was just there was a tipping point in our understanding of the Holocaust,” he said.
This book arrives at a tipping point in Gladwell’s own life. In a span of five years, he got engaged, had two children, turned 61, and moved from Manhattan to pastoral Hudson, New York. “It’s a lot to handle. There isn’t a single person who ever lived whose parents did not say, ‘This is a lot!'” he laughed. “I have become the person that, you know, I once despised, and nothing makes me happier.”
He also despises Ivy League colleges, accusing them of prioritizing their own reputations over focusing on their students.
Has parenthood affected his outlook on any of the things that he’s written about before? “Well, it’s prepared me for the possibility that I will be a massive hypocrite!” Gladwell laughed. “So, you know, it’s one thing to write about what you should do with your kids when you don’t have them.”
For all his success, Malcolm Gladwell maintains that nothing has changed in his approach, his work ethic, or his contrarianism. “It hasn’t changed what I do,” he said. “I don’t farm out my research; I still go on reporting trips. It hasn’t gotten old. In fact, my great regret is I don’t have time to do more.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Revenge of the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell
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Story produced by Wonbo Woo. Editor: Remington Korper.
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Pope Francis denounces military attacks that go “beyond morality” when asked about Israel’s recent attacks
Pope Francis criticized military attacks that go “beyond morality” after he was asked about Israel’s recent escalation of attacks in Lebanon that targeted top Hezbollah commanders.
Francis made the comments while en route home from Belgium when reporters asked him to weigh in on Israel’s airstrike that killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday. The strike in Beirut targeted an area greater than a city block and reduced several buildings to rubble.
Hezbollah confirmed that the airstrike also killed Ali Karaki, one of the group’s senior commanders. At least seven top commanders in the Iran-backed militant group have been killed in recent days by Israel strikes.
Andrew Medichini / AP
Francis, who didn’t mention Israel by name and said he was speaking in general terms, said that “the defense must always be proportional to that attack.”
“When there is something disproportionate, there is a dominating tendency that goes beyond morality,” he said. “A country that does these things — and I’m talking about any country — in a superlative way, these are immoral actions.”
He said that even if war itself is immoral, there are rules that “indicate some morality.”
“But when you don’t do this … you see the bad blood of these things,” he said.
The death of Nasrallah has sent shockwaves throughout Lebanon and the Middle East, where he has been a dominant political and military figure for more than three decades.
President Biden said the Israeli strike was a “measure of justice” for victims of Hezbollah’s “reign of terror.”
Francis has tried to strike a balance in his comments on the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the conflicts in Gaza and southern Lebanon that have ensued. He has called for an immediate cease-fire, for the release of hostages taken by Hamas and for humanitarian aid to get to Gaza.
Francis repeated that he calls the Catholic parish in Gaza every day to see how they are doing.
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Transcript: H.R. McMaster, former National Security Adviser, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Sept. 29, 2024
The following is a transcript of an interview with H.R. McMaster, CBS News contributor and former National Security Adviser, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Sept. 29, 2024.
ROBERT COSTA: We’re joined now by retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. He did serve as National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, but he has not endorsed either candidate in the presidential race this time around. He’s also a CBS News contributor and the author of a new book, “At War With Ourselves.” Good morning, General, thanks for being here.
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Robert, great to be with you.
ROBERT COSTA: You just heard from retired General McChrystal. He has made an endorsement. You have not. Why not?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, Robert, I respect his- you know, his ability to make that decision and right to make that decision. But what concerns me these days is the military is getting drug in to partisan politics, and you hear really both parties trying to involve the military. Now, of course, General McChrystal is endorsing Vice President Harris as an individual, but I think sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate between an individual endorsement and the military getting drug into partisan politics, right? You hear- you hear this narrative these days, you know, from some people on the far right, that the military is woke, or from the far left that the military is extremist. Hey, the military is not woke or extremist, right? The military is doing its duties under the Constitution and for whoever’s elected commander in chief. So that’s been a big part of my reticence. And then the other role is, I think, Robert, I mean, the other reason is, I don’t think anybody needs me to tell them how to vote, right? In the book and in other venues, I lay all- all of it out, right, the good, the bad, the ugly, you know, of- of the Trump administration. But I do so in context of the eight Obama years that followed it and the four- that preceded it, and the four Biden years that followed it. So I think voters should make their own decisions, and what I’ve tried to do is help inform voters, no matter what their- which way they’re leaning.
ROBERT COSTA: Let’s turn to the Middle East. What’s your view? You heard from Senator Cotton, you heard from General McChrystal. How do you see a possible war on the horizon, if any, between Israel and Iran? Or is there something that can be done, especially by the United States, to contain what is happening?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Robert, I would say there already is a war between Israel and Iran, and it’s a- it’s a war that Iran has been waging for four plus decades. Nasrallah, who was there at the beginning of Hezbollah, who was there when they killed 241 Marines in- in Beirut, and began a campaign against not only who Nasrallah called the cancerous boil of Israel, but the great Satan of the United States. And Nasrallah, remember what his catchphrase was at the end of like, almost- many of the speeches that he gave, which was, the Jews are vulnerable because they love life. We can take that away from them. We will win, because they love life and we love death. And so the Israelis have had, really, no choice. Remember, right after the heinous attacks of October 7, that’s when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in solidarity with- with Hamas. That resulted in the evacuation of 10% of Israel’s territory. About 70,000 Israelis are out of their homes. And so I think Israel is taking the right approach to escalate against an enemy who’s been able to escalate, really, on their own terms, with impunity. And I think increasingly the United States has to act like we know what the return address is, in Iran. Now’s the time to double down on the pressure on Iran, to dry up the cash flow available–
ROBERT COSTA: What does that mean, though? Just in terms of financial action, or do you expect there might need to be a U.S. military role down the line for the United States in the Middle East?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, there already is- is a military role–
ROBERT COSTA: In terms of ground troops or air strikes?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, I think- I think both- all of this should be kind of on the table. And I think we should act like we know where those rockets are coming from, the 150,000 rockets that Hezbollah has pointed at Israel, the 40,000 or so members of Iran’s proxy army in Syria, the Palestinians, along with Jihad and Hamas in the West Bank, what remains of Hamas in Gaza, those were all trained, equipped, supplied by Iran, to create this ring of fire around Israel, and to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. The precursor to that is to act against us. Robert, 175 attacks against U.S. forces and U.S. installations by Iranian proxies since October 8 of last year.
ROBERT COSTA: General, you say the United States and Israel should be in lockstep, or at least aligned, as they move forward. But the Pentagon has said, the Biden administration has said, they were not informed about these attacks ahead of time. So what does that say about the real state of play between Israel and the United States?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: I think what Israel has determined is that it had to protect its security and secrecy around this operation. If you think about the blows that they delivered to Hezbollah in the- in the past week, 10 days, it’s really unprecedented, you know, killing so many of them, winning so many with the beepers and then the walkie talkies, and then when they couldn’t talk securely, they met at a location in Beirut, struck that target. So, Nasrallah has- has been taken out, but so has all the cadre around him. These are decades long of relationships and knowledge, and so I think now is the time to put on the financial sanctions. Why did the Biden administration not enforce the Trump era sanctions against Iran, and allowed about $100 billion to flow to that theocratic dictatorship? Now’s the time to reverse that policy.
ROBERT COSTA: So that- Israel has taken out military targets. Lebanon is saying that many civilians have been killed. What should the U.S. do in terms of protecting civilian deaths moving forward, talking to Israel about that issue, what needs to be done on the civilian front?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, what you want is, you need firepower to overwhelm this enemy, but you also want to apply that firepower with- with discrimination.
ROBERT COSTA: Is that being done?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Well, it depends on the calculus at the time. Remember, the bunker in which Nas- Nasrallah was killed was underground, several stories underground, underneath where? An apartment complex. And so it’s Hezbollah. Remember, he said, we love death. Remember what Hamas leadership said just before the October 7 attacks? The purpose, one of the purposes, of that attack, was to get some of their own people killed so they could use that against Israel. So it’s really important, I think, at this stage, to continue to impress on the Israelis, apply firepower with discrimination, but also to recognize that these terrorist organizations are the principal causes for the violence and destitution and the suffering of the people in Gaza and the people in Lebanon. Look at the great promise of Lebanon. It’s a beautiful country. Look at what Hezbollah has done to that country, with their alliance with the Syrians in the 2000s, remember, we had the Cedar Revolution in 2006 after Hariri’s assassination. I mean, the Lebanese people are destitute, in large measure because of Hezbollah.
ROBERT COSTA: And just finally here, former President Donald Trump, who you know well, he met with President Zelenskyy in recent days. He keeps talking about being able to broker something between Zelenskyy and Putin. Do you buy it?
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: You know, I don’t really buy it in terms of, you know, hey, in 24 hours, it can be- I think it’s a real- it’s a real myth, right? It’s a real misunderstanding of war to assume that you can get a favorable political outcome without a favorable military outcome. That’s never really happened in war. And so I think the right course of action is, if you want to accelerate toward progress, toward a settlement, is to convince Putin that he’s losing the war. I think that’s the only way you get a favorable settlement. How do you do that? You demonstrate our resolve to continue to support the Ukrainians as they defend themselves against this continued onslaught by the Russians. That’s how you get to, maybe, favorable conditions for negotiation.
ROBERT COSTA: General McMaster, we appreciate you coming on “Face The Nation.” Hope you come again. Thank you very much.
LT. GENERAL H.R. MCMASTER: Thank you.
ROBERT COSTA: And we’ll be back in a moment.
9/29: Sunday Morning – CBS News
Pope Francis denounces military attacks that go “beyond morality” when asked about Israel’s recent attacks
Transcript: H.R. McMaster, former National Security Adviser, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Sept. 29, 2024
9/29: Sunday Morning – CBS News
Pope Francis denounces military attacks that go “beyond morality” when asked about Israel’s recent attacks