Malcolm Gladwell: The best metro reading

Good morning,

I wanted to share two books I’ve devoured this summer. They’re both by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell: “The Tipping Point” and “Blink.” I finished both in about a week each, and it made waiting for and riding the metro so much faster because he writes so well. He used to be a science writer for the Washington Post, so he’s able to explain complex things really easily.

In “The Tipping Point” Gladwell explores the idea that little things really do make a big difference. They can literally “tip” – creating dramatic change. He followed trends that exploded because of the smallest of things.

Crime on New York City’s subways was once horrendous. City officials tried to fight it by hiring more police to prevent the violent crime that was taking place, but it was changing the little things like fighting fare jumpers and painting over graffiti that really made a difference. The idea is that graffiti and a relaxed view of fare jumpers led people to think that no one is watching the subway and everyone who rides it gets a greater feeling of lawlessness -- which allowed violent crime to flourish.

Gladwell also followed how hush puppies made a major comeback from near-bankruptcy to the hottest fashion item, simply because some club kids in New York started wearing them, and suddenly fashion designer took notice.

In “Blink” he follows another great concept – how we as members of the animal kingdom are able to determine things about other people in a matter of seconds. He cited a study of hundreds of married couples who were filmed talking about something that was a bone of contention between the two of them. He set up cameras that tracked each person’s face, their blood pressure and tone of voice for ever millisecond of the conversation.

What he found was that based on each person’s millisecond reaction to the debate, he could determine with great accuracy, whether or not that marriage would survive. These miliseconds were indicative of their entire relationship. The couple may have looked like they were just chatting about something innocuous – like a smelly pet – but in fact there were clear signs that the issue revealed a greater decisivenesses in the relationship.

He studied how a huge percentage of CEOs are about six feet tall. While it might not be okay to have bias in the U.S. on gender and race, humans seem perfectly wiling to have biases against height. Gladwell argues that humans quickly look at someone and assume that they are “leaders” often based on how tall they are. (By the way Clinton was 6’2” and Bush Jr. is 6’. While Hillary Clinton, is 5’8”) It’s totally changed the way I think about height.

Warren Harding, was apparently so good looking and tall that political insiders made a push to make him president and he turned out to be what many historians characterize as one of the worst presidents in American history.

He also followed face-reading experts who mapped out the hundreds of human facial expressions that exist. The experts were so good that they could tell by looking whether someone was lying and wanted to be caught and loved for their indiscretions (Clinton, during the Lewinsky scandal) “Clinton’s got a way of rolling his eyes, along with a certain expression and what it conveys is: ‘I’m a bad boy.”

They also studied the O.J. Simpson trial and found that Kato Kaelin, though trying to look aloof, had a look of contempt for Marcia Cross that resembled “a snarling dog.”

These facial expressions are involuntary and universal, no matter what culture someone grew up in. I would love to learn this skill – imagine being able to spot a liar in seconds?

What I love about Gladwell and what I think we can learn from his writing is how he translates difficult concepts into something fascinating. I’m also so jealous of his job, he literally writes about human emotions and cognition. How cool is that?

Lisa Chiu