Bonus Live Episode: Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell

May 21, 2019

Around the launch of Against the Rules, Michael spoke with his friend and co-producer, the author Malcolm Gladwell, at the 92Y in New York. Hear them talk about podcasting, referees, and the magic of “conversational delight.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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hi there it's Michael Lewis here you probably know that against the rules is the first podcast that I've ever done and it probably shows so I appreciate all of you for sticking with it the first season is over but we want to give you something a little extra as a token of appreciation

the writer Malcolm Gladwell and I had a conversation back in April of 2019 when against the rules had just launched we met in front of a live audience at the 92nd Street Y which is this great center of culture and Jewish life on the upper east side of Manhattan we had a big crowd and the whole thing was a lot of fun to do and we talked about how I got interested in not just podcasting but the quandary of referees in American Life

we want to give you a little peek behind the curtain of producing this show and also a glimpse of the next season of Malcolm's podcast revisionist history

thank you thank you Malcolm for doing this thank you I my apologies to the audience I'm the reason this is like eyes on subway yep that feeling no further explanations needed Michael I think every time you do some new project you Trot me out to interview you and I feel like this

like my first time doing this but I've done it as much for you you've done it for me and I'm going to have to do it in September apparently yeah you might have to do that September last time we were on the stage I feel like mortally offended you and I got all kinds of angry I'm not angry but kind of several friends of mine who might actually be here tonight sent me emails saying should chiding me for my I didn't let it I you know I pursued particular lines of uncomfortable inquiry with too much Vigor so I'm going to vary not I'm going to be nice

nice to see me nasty Malcolm this and put aside and we're just going to get nice welcome let's talk about just for the record yeah I don't remember any of that well you but that's that is I really don't remember any of that is your great arms a pleasure to speak with you that is a great charm ingenious I do think you have an ability to sell the most unbelievable shit and and and you that you did it you did it with me the last time and I don't want to see just how

offended in any way but Jesus Christ Malcolm what do you think you're doing what no no you're just your this just proving to the world what a what a fantastic wasp you are that you and by the way you're probably the only wasp in his room your ability to kind of like Nazi and dismiss and explain away conflict is quite extraordinary let's get both spent much of my life is the only wasp in the room yeah in fact

your it'll be on your into your Tombstone Toy Boy he wasn't the only one I mean every room I wrote I wrote this piece for the new Republic called Toy Boy and it was about being the toigo a about being the one going in every a Jewish institutions yeah it made everybody feel comfortable nobody cared what I thought about Israel I can I could work on Passover you know they I played that role but all right so we won't talk about well this wonderful podcast of yours

and I wanted to start with the obvious questions that you're going to get every time you do any kind of media they're going to ask you this question so I thought I'd start with it this transition from Rider to podcaster

how was it what you persuaded me this was a lot easier than it was it you really did which is a lot it was a total lie so the short answer is it was a lot harder than I imagined it to be a lot more fun than I imagined it to be and it was different and it was the I came to the conclusion that some stories are better told in this medium than in a book form for me anyway I'm you have this great gift of be I've said this to many times you have this great gift of

King ideas and giving them the quality is of actions that you don't actually even need a character all you need is your ideas to play with on the page and the people become almost incidental and it's a couple quick Lon I'm not sure I meant it is cool but no I but it's it and it's you create the feeling of narrative even without the conventional ingredients of a narrative I can't do that when I write what is essentially SAS material its it reads like an ass

say if I don't have a main character if I don't have a kind of drama that I'm playing out and this this idea was naturally kind of essay ish it was a series of it's 70 pieces around a theme and it as a book I don't think it would have cohered but so one of the cool things I found was this the voice pulls your voice is able to pull an audience through a story even if there's not exactly a story even if it's even

is not as the materials not as unified as you would like it to be if it was on the page I found it's it's just it's interesting they also you can hear the character's voices you know when you put something in quotation marks no matter what you do around it making that getting that sound off the page you can't completely reproduce it and we have characters who just come to life their voices just this bring the you have to do any work at all and so that was interesting to me you think Buddy to go back to how are you

to dwell a little bit on that idea that there are certain ideas certain stories you that you can only tell this way you know podcast what did you maybe should I just first this explain what the podcast is because it's just came out yesterday their first episode so it's called against the rules and it's about referees in American life and it's the general argument is that the human referee is on the run or under assault wherever you wherever you turn

except in the cases where the refs been bought by one side and then he might be very comfortably ensconced in a rigged system but the there wasn't for me there wasn't one story I wanted to tell their whole bunch of stories I wanted to tell and they would have felt in a net in a book like either like a separate story or a digression a long digression I think and I wanted to play with the argument and I wanted to play with the subject matter but I

I didn't have one person or I didn't have you know normally what I have is either either I have I have I have a main character who can teach the audience and I you know I had seven or eight characters here and that would have been it would have been hard to structure as a conventional narrative so it was interesting to be able to do it this way the other big difference is book writing is really an individual sport I mean it is just it's just you and

the this is definitely it I don't know how you found it but for me it was completely a team sport it was and it was fabulous I mean the editor the people who Nick were tell who made the music The Producers the you know they were all intimately involved in to the extent that in a couple of cases The Producers went and did a couple of the interviews and that was having to having to both make work with other people is he was a healthy for me but also having to because I don't often have to do it

it but having to satisfy them in the course of doing that was interesting normally I'm just satisfying me and they were hard to satisfy you know they are hard to please and that was it that was just it was interested have that friction in my life did you feel like pleasing them entailed compromises no no like entailed me learning what the hell I was doing I mean they are you really that they were right and I was wrong well those kinds of things we wrong

swell

did my argument makes sense to them sitting there that's a simple one but it was much of it was just structural was kind of like like what I whether the there was it was just there they had a better sense than I did I've learned pretty quickly but I had a better sense than what than I did about what someone who is just taking it in here would tolerate from the in the way of way of digression in the way of

odd structure to story in the way of starting something and not coming back to it for 15 minutes what I had to do to accommodate to make sure that I didn't lose the audience they also had a much better sense of what I could leave on The Cutting Room floor that I all my scripts and it was it was more like it was also writing a book that I'm writing a screenplay As You Wish - I've done it was kind of in between all the all the original scripts were twice as long as they needed to be

B and there was all stuff that I didn't see you could remove and they saw it they were really good at seeing what you could pull out so this that was different just having a that kind of collaboration but the you know I this isn't when I'm moving through the world looking for things I'm going to do something will catch my eye and I'll open a folder on it and not knowing where it will go and I have stacks of manila folders beside and shells beside my desk and a decade ago to things happen this way

triggered this interest in referees and I never knew what I was going to do within the folder got thicker and thicker but it never emerges a narrative and then this medium comes along and all of a sudden I could oh I had no idea this was something a long time in the do you remember what the initial trigger was for the interest in referee yeah the two things it was right after the financial crisis and I was I just been put in charge of the Albany Berkeley girls softball league travel ball teams my job was to take these little

girls from Berkeley the All-Stars from the lead at age 8 10 12 and 14 and and get them into shape so they could go over the hill and compete against Republicans and and my predecessor had not done a very good job of it yeah and I went to I took it seriously and so my the my girls were playing and the first time I started when I open the file it started with this it was our first tournament

there's a little place called Rohnert Park and it was a it was a night game and they were a bunch of nine-year-old girls on the field and maybe 50 parents in the stands and it was closed and one of our girls slid into home plate to tie the game the top of the last inning and the Rohnert Park the opposing team's coach came out of the Dugout and started started cursing up and down at the Umpire who called our little girl safe I mean the language was just

unbelievable and their whole fan sites are screaming at the Umpire and you know no one on our side none of the girls in our diet ever heard the word fuck and they were just they were in awe they were watching this they never seen a kind of loved it because it was great I love that they could see how grown-ups actually behaved instead of how instead of how Berkeley parents after they but but this thing escalated on the field and the coach didn't back down and the Umpire didn't back down the Umpire was a

and all of a sudden Berkeley parents started getting raised and so you looked around and everybody's screaming at everybody most the people screaming at the Umpire there was a great Berkeley moment when this voice cut through the night and it and she is woman screamed what horrible modeling for our children but be odd receptor that it was like you idiot you asshole you you know you're safe out you know and and

the Umpire finally the coach find through the coach out so you're out but it was his ballpark so he says okay you can throw me on the steps outside he says I'm now no longer in the position of coach I'm now in the position of director of this facility and you're fired so so he is now 9 o'clock at night in the malls are up in the in the lights and everybody's Jaws on the floor of the the just fire the only umpire so the game can't actually go on and

doesn't know what to do she actually just because okay and just walks out into the parking lot everybody's just standing on the field and I thought this is my moment when I'm spoiling the position of authority what am I Isis or file followed her out into the parking lot and she was weeping and I went up to her and I kind of like put my arm around this before me too you know okay to kind of--can soul in abide in like Manner and and I said you know

no I said you know you know you don't you don't have to take that you know you really should go back and as I said it was like is there anybody you can call and she says yeah there's an Umpire Association and it was it's not a clock in California it was unbelievable there was anybody I where this place was she gets the Umpire Associates down the line and they say he can't fire you we're going to call the guy who's the head of the thing that had of the facility and we'll get him fired you go back and finish the umpiring and she went right back in

and threw him out and and the game went on but from then on I started to watch these poor people who are brought out to umpire nine-year-old girls games and they were on the receiving end of constant abuse and my first question was why would anybody even do that job but my second reaction was like why do people behave that way towards umpires I've never felt that way towards umpires why are they why do people take out so much of their Furious

on them why is that so hard that job so this happens at a as I finished the big short and I'm watching what's going on on Wall Street in the back end of the financial crisis and one way of looking at the natural crisis was as an Umpire in problem that refereeing problem there was a breakdown of several refereeing roles but the bit one of the big ones was the credit rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor especially task with refereeing this

the security is on that Wall Street brings to market now totally failed

they totally fail for a very good simple reason they were being paid by the people who created the subprime mortgage bonds they were rating they were on the take that were being paid as I'm being played by one of the players and this umpire

briefly was flayed in public but basically was allowed to go right back to doing what they were doing with that any reform whatsoever and so I had this umpiring file with two one fire two kinds of vampires one was a very nice woman with some spine who is just trying to do her best and make sure the game was paid fairly and she was being made miserable and the other were these umpires on Wall Street

who were doing their job and I kind of had horrible incentives and and we're not they were not agents of fairness and the society was enabling them to keep going even though they orchestrated helped orchestrate this horrible Calamity and I just started at that point so I think you know like why do some umpires why are some umpires in positions of strength and wires I'm a bar isn't position of weakness first off what I was going to do is write a sitcom about Empires and

is set in the world of girls softball but I really had no idea was gonna do the material yeah and I just started to accumulate material and then Jacob Weisberg your co-founder of Pushkin Industries and I are on a hiking trail the year and a half ago when we started talking about this subject he said you know it could work as a podcast and by the time we start when you start thinking about the subject and start looking we start looking for referees you see them everywhere yeah I mean that there was an end up being seven episodes but could have been 15 and

there was a kind of like there were some arguments to be teased out but you had to move around in a somewhat haphazard fashion that the podcast structure really lets you do yeah could I ask you only go back a second kind of writerly question in this file after that experience with your daughter's baseball team how much did you like write a big how much did you write about the that evening I wrote a

paragraph about the evening but they stuck it in the file and I put on the outside of it oops and and chased it and I made notes to like I would check at the tournament the girls tournaments I would follow the Umpire back to his car there a lot of these guys live out of their cars and just talk to them a little bit about why they did what they did the and I saw and make notes based on those conversations and I just I was just kind of just kind of sometimes I open my eyes felt nothing goes in it's

oops stick it up on the Shelf maybe that's a subject I will pursue but it just seems to me and then you mind the more you watch it if you back away from and look at the way this Society treats people it just in sports in the umpiring roll it's bizarre you know you go to a basketball arena and 18,000 people are chanting in unison refuse suck I mean the the but there are 18,000 people on the other side who are saying thank you for making the calls on my own

in our favor I mean it's like nobody's nobody's ever thanking this person for the cheating he supposedly doing on behalf of the other team of the other and the people see in this person Injustice where it doesn't exist this person has this ability to generate an outrage that's out of all proportion to to like how he's behaving and sort of like he ends up he is up at the center

of I mean he ends up as a character generally kind of unexplored you wanted things ended up on The Cutting Room floor I enter your Daryl Morey who is the the Houston Rockets GM who I adore who had lots of done lots of studies about umpire about referees new their Tendencies new like we're home court advantage was worse because the referees are better because referees more likely give the the the home team the call had done all this work on referees and I asked him if you ever met him

ever met one of them

no you know never even occurred to me that I was actually go meet one of these guys and talk to one of these guys that they were completely unexplored characters why you know it's interesting to go back to the Paradigm you have between the Wall Street people and the baseball Little League Baseball umpires in one case the operating assumption is the I can influence the ref if I try and intimidate or if I abuse her in the other

case the notion is that I simply buy them off that it was I do an exaggerated form of charming them yes and I'm always wondered why

those roles are reversed so are there NBA coaches who try to charm referees and are their businesses who are business people who explicitly try and essentially scream of the government referee so the answer the first question is surprisingly few the NBA players that you can't really get the players even the former players won't talk about the rest cause they just get in trouble but Shane

who's a friend who played in the NBA for many years said to me it amazed him that no one ever how seldom people tried to actually be nice to the refs that's what his strategy was to be nice to the rest of you thought that was an original strategy so the but the the the but but the answer the answer in the NBA is one of the reasons everybody's really even angrier at the rafts even though the refs are getting better is that the refs are getting better their heart is harder to charm and harder and impossible to intimidate

they're holding themselves to these objective standards and they're judged by these objective standards and the stuff that's going on around them they're more and more impervious to the so the second part is our their dues it was browbeating yes like Mark Cuban was an example where they tried to browbeat the FCC yeah so I think the browbeating works in private but but but what it's so much better

you can just buy the ref you know I mean if you if you look at if you look at the way they mean the rate that's that was that's such a sweet is rather than going and scream at Moody's and Standard & Poor that your subprime mortgage bonds or Triple A so much better just to slip them some money to make you know to create that incentive so that they're more likely to smile upon the Securities but so anyway this whole thing come it's interesting the subject got more interesting to me and it became

I'm more real in the presidential election because are all that because the same the two campaigns that had a real energy about them as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump's campaign and the bottom of both campaigns was the system's rigged that that it was all about referees having not done their job and there was some justice to those charges but that and that's why I thought you know maybe we could maybe there's maybe this is worth trying to do

and it was

we'll have more of my conversation with Malcolm Gladwell at the 92nd Street Y in New York after this break

we're now back with more of my conversation with Malcolm Gladwell I wanted to compare notes with Malcolm who's been podcasting for a while if you listen closely you'll hear a little bit about what's to come in the next season of his show revisionist history

when you when you made those initial observations about us umpires referees did you think you were examining an age-old problem or a new problem the thing that I loved about the first episode that came out

yesterday was I kept on I was thinking oh this is interesting and Michael's going to tell me why we've always had this problem but then you told me no no no this is new for really really interesting reasons and that was the turn where you cook me in and that that was a non-obvious turn I feel like if I done story I would have blown it because I would have just tried to prove to you to be around forever and that's not interesting actually well that the that the refs are

views forever yeah I would have said oh

you know what you're observing is something the Romans did you know that I would have done that some ludicrous move like that but the thing I was genuinely so that prize by the turn where we learn its new and why why it's new so Sports is such a wonderful laboratory disk is so clean and so many ways but it's new and it's in its its new ish in that the NBA when Adam Silver became commissioner he they but back up to for the first episode

is about that the refs about an actual Sports ref the only episode in the series it's about sports is the first is the first episode and it's about it professional basketball refs and what's it was interesting to me about that subject is if you man it's just just kind of generally drone Sports combination of technology and Anna we're at and transparency is forcing all the Umpire in the referee to get better

and you would think that would cause everybody to appreciate the rest more or at least protest them less but that's not happening especially not having a basketball it's got it from the point of view the rafts it's getting worse and worse a sort of like more likely to need a bodyguard to the arena more likely to have really ugly things that in the stand out of the stand more likely to have to throw star players out of the game because of things they do and say at the same time the

the refereeing is clearly more objectively accurate and the thing that

do you remember Curt Schilling the pitch yeah so this is there was a moment we told you what kind of why objective refereeing might end up creating a lot of anger in Sports Major League Baseball introduced pitch track machines into ball the ball parks and that's the machine that shows you where the strike zone is and up to the point they introduced these machines the strike zone is entirely subjective matter with the Umpire thinks is a strike

and there's no real way to check him now they have measured the strike zone they can determine if the Umpire has been after the fact if the Empire has been calling accurately or not and he has graded on his accuracy he's measured Against the Machine so there's been this in the decade since they've introduced those machines has been in pressure on these umpires to conform to the state to the the machines accuracy and the way and and they have and they will brag I only got one wrong you know

now why they even keep the umpires there is another question because the machine could just do it but but the umpires started to change the way they call the game in response to the machine meaning they became more accurate you think everybody would think that was a good thing Curt Schilling came out of a ballgame early when he's pitcher I can't remember who's pitching for the time either when the Red Sox I think might happen with the Diamondbacks Furious because his before he did not perform well went into the Dugout grabbed

that and went and destroyed the pitch track machine and they find in $50,000 and he and he was angry because the Umpire used to give him calls that were not strikes before they introduced this machine and he no longer was given that privilege he no longer had the advantages that are naturally accorded the stars and something like that is what's going on in basketball and what's happening basketball is its they haven't tried to introduce

a similar Spirit of objectivity and they've done it in many different ways they have built this five years ago at 15 million dollars they built this replay Center in Secaucus New Jersey which is the the site of the first episode of the podcast 15 million dollars to to run direct fiber optic cables to to every basket NBA basketball arena

in the each arena there I don't know a dozen cameras anyway trying to get every angle on the court and this room in Secaucus is a hundred and ten television screens showing the all the angles on every Court in the NBA and that's all it shows and so you can't watch you know you can't watch Homeland on it you can't you can't do anything with these TVs Except watch whatever happens to walk onto that basketball court wherever it is and their gods their professional referees

in there every night during the season double-checking the calls of the actual refs on the floor in case the refs make mistakes and the refs themselves are now graded and they've shown their mistakes after the game they the opportunity to check their mistakes if they check their judgments in that sure they're right they're trained and evaluate and all kinds of ways they never been before they are the hiring process is more professional it's just like gotten used to be an old boys network

like half a dozen of the rest 25 years ago came with the same high school it was just a bunch of kind of chubby white guys mainly Catholic filling from the Rolling Stone Philly that's right and and now you've got a broad enough that they've broadened out the talent search they got to get in shape these be fat right everybody else in America is getting fatter in the refs are getting better shape now they're buff and the and and they're trained they're trained they're being taught about all their biases the kind of biases that come into verse key taught us about but also

you know that they're more likely to give the home team the call or they have racial bias and they talk and they talk to correct for all this stuff how can they be anything but better but getting better does not mean making is not making people happy yeah it's it flaming that it's partly inflaming the situation so is it a mistake Stars don't like it is it a mistake to get better then I mean is there something Choice the world's changed the problem is now the fans can not only see in real time that a mistake might have been made they can see for sure

sure on the Jumbotron that a mistake was made or or might have been made and they can then and they can captured on their phones and they can tweet it and they have a they have material for outrage and it's the the not just the fans the players and so the sense of grievance even though the reason for grievance is clearly declining the reasons for grievance Oakley is clearly declining the feeling

grievance are going through the roof so it's becoming more affair on the basketball court but people feel it's less Fair yeah and but I don't think you could fix it by making the referees even worse than they are so used to be you know remember the phrase that was common in basketball the makeup call yeah that's baloney like it may be that it presumes you know you made a mistake if you know you made a mistake then don't make it no no no wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute the notion of the makeup call was to address precisely the problem you're talking about that other everybody's that

some team is outraged and then so the reason that you don't get quite as outraged as you talked about in the past the old system as you know you think that it is is you think you know the ref is a human being and you say oh he'll understand that he blew that call and he'll make it up for me in some subtle way and that will so that diminishes my sense of outrage in a perfect world where these guys are like robots and making the right which is generally very came increasingly are there it's amazing how good they are now so

NJ on those rare occasions when they do make a mistake there's no expectation of a makeup call no that's right so is that mean there are I mean I because I wonder about the I agree with you you can never go back but I feel like when you sort of roboticize refereeing in sports what you've done is you've disrupted The Narrative of the sport that you're drawn to the sports because it's a story and stories it used to be that the blown calls were part of the narrative not a

a good part of the narrative sure they're part of like what makes the guitar the game just went smoothly from beginning to end your art you don't want referee era it's not a positive thing to have referee era it's you want to minimize it your you can still have a glorious narrative on a you know in in any kind of contest without a referee yes the messiness of the sport is one of the things that you think you think on more referee era the better no no I'm saying that the that we operate

it for many years around a narrative about sports that included the notion of referee are we've taken that out and what we've done is we've disrupted The Narrative maybe we're just going through a period of time where we were I think that's right and I think that's true story partly true and it's also I mean you know there's a whole bunch of things going on at once one is that everybody can see the era and replay it and focus on it and organize around it in ways they couldn't before another is that the

nature of the Improvement of the refereeing is it's removing privilege from people who can naturally protest the loudest the stars and and they used to getting the calls and then I get they can't get the calls in the same way it's also you know there was if you go back 10 years in the NBA home court advantage was a much bigger deal and it was and there were studies that were done sure though the source of home court advantage was referee era it was like the referees trying to tilt towards a home crowd just to appease them now it's not that

deal but who's pissed about that the people who are in the arena the people who think they should get an advantage because it's their home court but I think against the even bigger than this is that there's the backdrop to all this is people are more and more aware our have a greater greater sense that there's no such thing as neutrality that there's like people are biased we you know that they know in the case of referees the opposite is true they are now less bias are left there even though there there and there

they've been made aware of their biases Every Which Way and try to work against them everybody it's in the air that

you know a white guy won't be fair is fair to a black guy is is to a white guy it's in the air that that the condom and tversky stuff that that people make those kind of mistakes it's in the air that they are they favor the home home team or they favor Stars so that is it even as there's a less reason for cynicism about what's going on inside the mind of a professional NBA referee this more awareness awareness of the reasons for cynicism about

Bill judgment referee judgment generally yeah that one of the takeaways from the common diversity stuff is that nobody's like nobody's judgments you know everybody's judgments is systematically flawed it was interesting is the yes it is the process of investigating what the process of investigating bias does is more than anything alert us to the uncomfortable fact that there was a lot of bias there that we didn't even think about that's right who would we had no idea just how unfair it all used to be I was at

it just reminds you yesterday I was / one of my podcast episodes I'm hanging out with the folks who make the LSAT to construct the LSAT who and they do these bias tests so they have practice questions which do you all take when you take the LSAT as one separates all practice questions and they look to see whether different groups have different patterns of answering questions correctly which is something I would never have thought about so there was a question to show of me and it's just this random question about some literary figure in the 17th century

and see which is the wrong answer all the smartest women taking the test thought was the correct answer like 50% of them got it said it was see it wasn't c d which is the right answer was overwhelmingly the mail Choice 50% of the been so here's a question that has something this patterns in the error is in the air as there's this massive pattern in the air and there's nothing obvious about it and if they find the pattern they are do they think there's something wrong with the question big throw

Janelle and I said then we'll what is it about this totally

Anodyne question about 17th century literature that caused all these really smart female test-takers to answer C right and they're like no idea no clue it just doesn't work like that process the minute I hear that I think oh my God this thing is rigged in ways I hadn't even thought right yeah so like it's the same process now I'm alert before I was like well it's intelligence don't you know you and I have both made this turn into this new medium your future is out of me

how have you found what are you find the differences are from writing this Pros on the page well it's funny I have gone to the opposite because I don't write books that are character-driven as much now in this medium I'm really into the character driven so I like I'm drawn to the fact that I can bring these characters to life in a way because I'm not as I don't I you know I

I'm not being falsely modest I'm not nearly as good as you at bringing individuals to life on the page but if I can get tape then I can do that I feel like I can like I you know and you can capture interactions like there's any one of my episodes this for next season I have these two women who are sisters who wrote a book together a really good book of History largely so they can hang out with each other this one has been one is like seven day one is 65 and there's so insanely charming and all you do is just

run the tape and you're in love with it when you're in love with him it doesn't matter what happens next it is like it is amazing the difference when you can hear a person's voice that we have an episode at the second episode which you actually edited it's about how hard it is to create a referee even when you clearly need a referee in this is it's about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but we have a woman who was who was just crushed by student my God that went bad and it to the point where she's a she's a she is a public school teacher who with

the with a couple of kids who who student loan servicer has basically deceived her from from not even knowing really about for years for years knowing about a program that Congress created to relieve her student loan debt because it paid them to keep her in the student in the in the debt and to the point where her she grind has been grinding her teeth so badly night that five or teeth have fallen out and she's now won't smile and if I told the story just if I just told the story you

you might think I had my thumb on the scale you couldn't quite believe it like you think I was exaggerating but when she just tells it straight you're weeping I mean and and there's no question the sincerity just just it just jumps out of the off the tape in a way in a way that I would have to try to persuade the reader of and I don't it just you just let her speak and it's magnificent incredibly moving what can't you do in the podcast form so

talk about that story did you whether there must be limitations because I tell you things you don't have tape of that's the that's the problem you got to go out and interview you have to have the thing if it's you just talking it's far less less less persuasive than if you've got some someone else you know it's it's so that it's it's a constraint that's worse with TV when you have to have that the pictures but you can only do so much

with your own words in this in the narrative for my thing so that's your constrain their but what can't you do like what stories when it gets complicated yes it gets hard I could not so it's hard it was hard very hard to explain I didn't even really explain but I tried to explain a collateralized debt obligation in The Big Short it's most complicated thing I've ever tried to explain to anybody and

I can do that and that's not possible in a podcast you could not do it in a podcast that you just you just couldn't I mean people would have Collision the people listen is there driving would be having crashes on the highway and you you you so because the reader can go back the reader can slow down the reader can the reader can can Pace themselves through an explanation what I was breaks my heart is where you finally find the person who you think can explain the thing

it's going to give you tape and then they're boring which in a book it doesn't matter right in a book like I feel like that sir that is one of your Genius is as a brighter is you have clearly in your life made a lots of boring people seem really fascinating but so I put it in on me so I'd put it a different way you're absolutely right that that people's voices kill them as characters that you you're you're talking to them five

and it's and you think that voice just won't work not work it's not going to work and you know there are people in this world who I mean it's an amazing almost a superpower who have an ability to walk into a room and kill all interest in the room I mean I had I'd an uncle who had this capacity and it was he was a great guy and he did really interesting stuff but the minute he opened his mouth it was like it really like everybody's gasping for air there's no Oxygen in them and you just incredibly dull and it was Dulles

listening to him and you were just relieved when he someone else someone else threw themselves on that hand grenade and and he the the so it is true that you can take that person in print and bring them to life yeah I can make my uncle really great inherent but but I could not the minute the minute someone heard him speak you lose yeah they wouldn't believe anything you said about it if you know what I the one trick that I found though is sometimes you think

I was going to be boring but it's because you're in book interview mode and podcast interview mode is quite different than what you really want to do when you're interviewing someone on a podcast if you want them to speculate and free-associate so you want to push them you don't want them giving when you're doing when you're doing the book interview there you want them to describe in detail

you know A to Z how this works yes did you walk me through you always use f walk me through how you never say walk me through in the podcast interview well you say is what about like imagine this and then there's a certain point they kind of get it they realize that oh we're just like let's play Let's play right yeah that's really true that's really true and there's though I had this once with this love I deserve you for this one of my pockets with this guy who has a OBGYN

true Philadelphia

and he gets his In The Weeds on some new kind of contraceptive deep in the reason I realize none of this is usable there's he starts talking about the endometrium the endometrium is not working and podcast form and you know follicles and then he sort of says something and I was like wait a minute this thing you're talking about why is that a contraceptive because po it's not a contraceptive and he goes down this long insanely interesting totally hypothetical thing about oh I'm gonna contraceptive a called something else and it gives you this

with about how it's actually this other thing over here and like it's just he just came alive so because he was so this is absolutely right and we had an episode 3 is about rafts in in the culture like language refs people who people who write who are usage panel members and dictionaries who they've all been let go and the people who used to write kind of usage manuals and I was taught we were I was talking to a guy named Brian Garner who's one of the

jurors in the in the episode and he's he's the author of a book called Garner's Modern English usage I think that's what's called 1200 Pages it's actually riveting but nobody but at Barnes & Noble told him a decade ago it's a defunct category yeah all of his Heroes their books sold millions of copies they were times where there was a time when when the language ref

occupied occupied a bigger role than he does now the crowd refs the language in and nobody wants to hear from this nude but he's a great snoo and he was just talking about like where the culture is gone and how he's daily outraged by things that you just can't believe that we're becoming this and he said I got a letter from my bank it said dear mr. Garner

a semicolon

and he was off for fight/flight like for like 10 minutes on on I called my bank manager I said there's a mistake it says Dear mr. Garner semicolon and and he says it's either a colon or a comma and the bank manager said could you write us a letter about that yeah and he said so I wrote them a letter and I see that you've come to the right place Roth IRAs said I wrote them a letter and I sided all the authorities including

God Garner's Modern English usage about where that you don't put a semicolon after dear mr. Garner and they they wrote him back and said we're keeping the semicolon and he called me said and he's and now he's just off I could not I didn't need to be there anymore right he's just he's like in his own world this is an outrage and he's for him it's genocide I mean that's that's it that is a code red if there's a there's a certain

quality of delight that that's not what we're talking about then only it's conversational Delight you don't get it's really hard to get Delight off the page you get Delight when you're in a conversation with someone and they go on some in some unexpected direction and you sort of understand that something fabulous is coming down the pike you kind of waiting for it yeah and they said take on that's what you're yeah and I those I was trying to prod people little bit in the direction of going off just to see what happens yeah

and the good ones will I understand that they've been given life but they're playing a game with you yes yeah stay with us for some more conversational Delight with Malcolm Gladwell

we're back with more of me and Malcolm Gladwell in conversation at the 92nd Street y his new company Pushkin Industries is the production house behind against the rules and I couldn't help but he's a little bit about something the crew there told me

it's funny that the producers when they came to me in the first place they said please please don't be like Malcolm and and try to tape your own stuff the first season almost of Malcolm's podcast almost killed us but it's nonsense you know what they are I know they're out there purists right they there they come from NPR which is like the Cathedral on the hill of sound yeah it's like the gothic Cathedral where and they sit and they study there

capture and then they go into The Cloisters and they take a vow of silence and then they listen to pure audio you know in the evenings like that's not the real world I'm living in I'm not I'm not in the monastery I'm good so I don't listen to them and they don't listen to you wait so we have questions we have questions we actually have quite a lot of time but I had some other oh I wanted to talk to you

about falling in love it's we talked about this a little bit I want you to talk a little more about this because you are in your fiction you're not fixing your books you fall in love with characters and then you were saying that in the podcast you're doing a different kind of slightly different storytelling where you're having many voices does that impair your we going to get the classic

Michael Lewis

character who we fall in love along with you and if we're not does that sort of are you a little bit sad about not having people to fall in love with you have people to fall in love with is just they're up there they're in a single episode I just don't live with him for the whole series yeah I fell in love with Alex Cogan Alex Cogan is he was the the academic responsible for the work that supposedly allowed Cambridge analytical to get Donald Trump elected yeah and in fact it's all

bullshit the eve of his work was useless the this this real story there is that it's amazing that Cambridge analytical persuaded anybody they knew anything that was useful hustle it's a hustle it's a hustle right place you got that yes and every a lot of people wanted to believe that that's why Donald Trump was elected because they needed a reason why don't we what episode is this is 3 this is actually part of episode 3 so is what's the what's the largest or the largest or is the Klein of of

of these culture wrestling is so it's language refs its buds m'n it's referees in The Newsroom so how this story ever got to the front page of the New York Times is is is part of a bit but he's built up is the main character the thing and in a very similar way to a character that you would fall in love with in a magazine piece yeah so this is totally the you've in some ways it's it's as it's easier to sell the cow

characters because you could hear them you can see why you your you should fall in love with him you love Ken Feinberg don't you showing up how many people here you can't really see it I bet one how many people here know Ken Feinberg is Ken Feinberg should be a household name Ken Feinberg was an ordinary lawyer when he was brought in in the early 80s to try to resolve the dispute between Vietnam veterans and the chemical companies that made

an orange in Vietnam veterans had without a whole lot of evidence I had brought a suit saying there that this this chemical that was sprayed across the jungles of Vietnam was responsible for all these health problems they are having and the case had lingered in the courts for seven or eight years and judges had despaired of resolving it and a judge asked this young lawyer Ken Feinberg to see if he could negotiate outside of the Court

solution resolution to the between the vets and the companies and in six weeks he had the thing done he was on the front page of every newspaper in the country and his career than just went he all of a sudden he became America's referee so he's brought in to adjudicate these disputes and the question was like to questions like what are we going to do when he dies because he seems to be brought any enemies like these like the Forrest Gump of them

of American Tragedy we and and but the second is like what is it about him like and I don't want to give away the story but he there were he had a theory of himself and his wife had a different theory of him and the wife's was right but but but you but his theory of his wife's Theory

you can hear kind of proven just in the sound of his voice oh his voice it is fan it's unbelievable so so it's so good that I think it's all the voice so it's so it's so good could be the voice it's probably it's the righteousness in the voice it's the it's a Boston accent like you cannot believe and so the episode opens with the passage

in the Bible the Solomon resolving this dispute between the two women each of whom is claiming the baby is hers and he's Solomon just about to cut the baby into and fibroids voice is so we won't have an actor read that we had the fibers voice was so good we just had Feinberg read the Bible and it was like it felt like God was reading the Bible so you they said this for you know yeah this form it's just nice to have

a different way to tell a story and a different way to get to an audience I don't I don't regard this as like a substitute for writing books but it is it's different and it's interesting I don't know you felt when you write it no matter how conversational your writing style is it is not conversation that how people talk is so different from how any writer writes that you have to learn how to write your own dialogue that is so kind of interesting anyway thanks for doing this Michael thank you pleasure being with you again

thanks for listening to this live bonus episode of against the rules I want to thank especially Malcolm Gladwell in his team at Pushkin Industries and the 92nd Street y for hosting our conversation I'm off now to my secret hiding place we'll try to figure out how to keep you entertained next year you can follow Pushkin pods on social media if you want to keep track of when I'm back on the fee I hope

soon I don't know each and every one of you but you've been a great audience the best a rider could ask for