Malcolm Gladwell Reveals the Secret to Keeping Curiosity Alive

"The secret to keeping your curiosity alive is to make an effort to expose yourself to new things."

When it comes to celebrity interviews, Malcolm Gladwell may not be the first name that comes to mind. But The Tipping Point author says he will "defend my props as a celebrity interviewer" on Audible's The Unusual Suspects with Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell. But it's not just celebrities; it's that mix of them with business figures, politicians and others that makes their conversations so thrilling. "The fun with choosing the guests was, how out of the box can we jump?" That process led to new discoveries. "It's incredibly interesting to be exposed to something that I've not thought about." And Gladwell is no stranger to exploring new ideas. He recently revisited his groundbreaking work in his new book Revenge of the Tipping Point, where he addresses "some quibbles" he has with how his theory of putting 10,000 hours into something to excel at it has been interpreted. "It never was intended as a prescription, and it was never intended to say that you can master anything in 10,000 hours. I was saying this is what's necessary for the expression of talent."

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARTING SHOT WITH H. ALAN SCOTT
ON APPLE PODCASTS OR SPOTIFY

Editor's Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.

How did your involvement with The Unusual Suspects come about?

I ran into Kenya years ago in a restaurant in Venice. He said hello, and then I was watching with my partner during the pandemic, #blackAF, and we thought it was the funniest thing. So I just texted him and said, "That show's genius. I hope you realize that." And so we reconnected then. And then, I can't even remember when, we just had this idea. He said he had made this deal with Audible to do a show, and I just thought because we are different enough that we would both bring different interests to the table. It's a nice pairing. It was, it's not an overlapping pairing. It's a complementary pairing. So I just thought, it's fun to hang out with Kenya and his celebrity friends.

That celebrity angle is interesting, because while I'd expect Kenya to have these chats with celebrities, I wouldn't expect you to. Does the uniqueness of that stand out to you?

The truth is, we're not just talking with celebrities. I think one of the best interviews we did was with Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox. She's known in the business world [but] people don't stop her when she walks down the street. So it's a mixture. We call it The Unusual Suspects because it really is a mixture of people that you have heard about, maybe don't know their story, and people you've never heard about. Wes Moore will be someone some people have heard about, but I don't think people realize how engaging [he is]. If you're not from Maryland, you would never have experienced sitting in a room with him and understood that this guy actually is a very serious [person] to be in the big chair [president] one day because he's special. And that's what we're we were trying to capture. But I will defend my props as a celebrity interviewer. [laughs]

Yeah, I mean it's a good mix between guests I'd expect Kenya to speak with, and guests I'd expect you'd to speak with.

Each of us nominated names that we thought would be interesting. I think [Jimmy] Kimmel was on Kenya's list, although I don't know whether they knew each other well. I just think his instinct—which I think was correct—was that away from the late-night camera, Kimmel has another side that's really interesting. That's what you want to do. If their public persona is funny and light, you want to go in the other direction, expose something different. That was our thinking there. But the fun with choosing the guests was, how out of the box can we jump? How many different fun directions can we go with it? It was an incredibly fun experience.

When you're speaking with someone who isn't traditional for you, where do you find the curiosity?

Well, part of it is, it's incredibly interesting to be exposed to something that I've not thought about. When we interviewed Sue Bird, I follow basketball, but I've actually never had an extended conversation with a professional basketball player. It's cool to sit inside their head for a little stretch. It's easier for me to relax and enjoy myself when it's someone who's not in my expected circle of interview guests. Ursula Burns is the kind of person who I would normally interview, and I was very much engaged. She's incredibly smart, and you have to be on your toes to keep up with her. But some of the other ones where we're talking with someone from Kenya's world, I get to eavesdrop and float along and every now and then offer some kind of random observation.

Have you been surprised by any of the guests?

I think the David Chang interview was the one where I didn't know much about him. I mean, I'd eaten once or twice at Momofuku, but I had no expectation. During the [interview] it comes across there's all these moments of delight when I realize there's little parts of his world that I understand. He grew up in the D.C. area. I lived there for years. He's an incredibly good golfer as a kid. I didn't realize how sports obsessed he was, how incredibly competitive he was; what comes across in that interview is the depth of his emotion. It was kind of a wonderful surprise. And then when he starts talking about food, finding someone who talks about food with the kind of specificity and expertise and enthusiasm that he does isn't just not something. I'm not a foodie. I loved that interview. I just thought, "Wow, this guy is really interesting and complicated and intense."

Just in general, when you're in a conversation with a guest or even looking into things you might want to tackle, where does your curiosity come from?

Well, one of my rules is that the secret to keeping your curiosity alive is to make an effort to expose yourself to new things, to different worlds. A small example of this in my own life is I'm constantly unfollowing people on Twitter [X] and following new ones. I follow only a small number of people, but I keep changing it because to me, where Twitter is at its best is a mechanism for accessing people outside your world. If you just use it to confirm your own biases, you're wasting your time. It's not really what it's good for. I got really into the Ukrainian war, and I follow all these super nerdy military logistics guys who have a take on the war. But the point is, it starts with a deliberate strategy to expose myself to that kind of thinking. And when Kenya approached me, I had the same thought, which is that Kenya and I live in different worlds, and this is an incredible opportunity for me to expose myself to his world and also to Kenya. The thing that you have to understand about these interviews is that we're interviewing a third person, but it is as much fun for me to watch Kenya as it is to watch the subject. There's two subjects in every interview. There are moments when Kenya has these moments of connection with some of the interviews. When he and Wes Moore start talking about the rap they listened to when they were teenagers. One of the episodes is the two of us just interviewing each other, and I learned all this stuff about him I had no idea about. This is a mechanism for expanding my world. That's what was my thinking going in.

What about Kenya's background in comedy fascinates you?

I don't mean this [to] sound the way it's going to sound, I think to call him a comedy writer is to understate his importance. He's an incredibly astute social observer. Take a show like #blackAF, just think about it as a penetrating insight into American society, and it's about class, it's about race, it's about all kinds of things, and it's dealt with on such a sophisticated level. It also happens to be very funny, but it's much more than that. He is an observer of America. He is as good an observer as American society as we have. And I say that without any reservation. He's just using the comic form. If you told me he was writing a literary novel that was serious and profound, I would say, "Yeah, that's really what his work is." His ability to capture in the most delicious way, skewer the sensibilities of certain people in society, it's just brilliant. I see that in him. I want to go along for the ride and see how this is done.

The Tipping Point really became a cultural phenomenon. And recently its 25th anniversary was celebrated with Revenge of the Tipping Point. Are you surprised at how culturally relevant it continues to be to this day?

I think you're always surprised when your ideas persist. Our expectation is that everything will wash away. So yeah, no one's been more surprised by the endurance of that idea of the book, and also the idea behind the book, which is why it was so much fun to go back and and pick up some of the same ideas and explore them again. But I'm not self-conscious about my career. I don't think of my career as some abstract thing that has a certain trajectory. I'm very much of the [mindset] you get up in the morning and you work on whatever you're working on. I have a very kind of lunch pail approach to journalism, so it's difficult for me to do that broader analysis of the impact of things I've written. I'm focused on the next thing.

For me, the theory of 10,000 hours has become so big, that's it's just part of how we communicate. It's become shorthand for being an expert at something.

Well, there's parts of it I like and parts of it I don't. I like the way, conceptually, what that theory is just about, that discipline, hard work and dedication play a larger role in expert development of expertise and life success than we tend to acknowledge. There are no overnight sensations. I like that. That idea has been embraced by many people, because I think that is the hugely important lesson. And secondly, along those same lines, that given how much work is necessary for expertise, you can never do it alone. That's the part of it actually that I wish I had foregrounded more. But part of the points I was making was that it is success of necessity, a group activity, because it takes so damn long to get there, right? If you're gonna spend 10 years playing chess before you're gonna be a chess grandmaster, your mom has to drive you to chess tournaments starting at 11, right? You gotta start at 9, which means your parents have to be involved. If your parents are not involved, you're not going to become a chess grandmaster. It's that simple. That kind of thinking.

The part I don't like is it never was intended as a prescription, and it was never intended to say that you can master anything in 10,000 hours. That's clearly not true. I wasn't saying that talent doesn't matter. I was saying this is what's necessary for the expression of talent. So I have some quibbles and some things I really like about [it] in general. I'm happy with the way that idea has been kind of incorporated.