The Megyn Kelly Show - Malcolm Gladwell on Gender Identity in Kids, Becoming a Dad, and Working From Home

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.480 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.740 My guest today for the full show, the one and only Malcolm Gladwell.

00:00:18.980 But before we dive into our discussion with him, I want to remind you,

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00:01:05.980 Now, to Malcolm Gladwell.

00:01:07.580 As many of you know, he is the author of five massive best-selling books.

00:01:12.080 But what's great about them is, yes, they're bestsellers, of course,

00:01:16.620 but it's the influence that they've had on our culture.

00:01:19.320 You don't realize how many fingerprints Malcolm Gladwell has left on our society in profound ways in books like The Tipping Point and Outliers.

00:01:30.740 He's also the host of a great and very popular podcast called Revisionist History, which I highly recommend to you.

00:01:38.020 Also, in his new episode released today, Malcolm revisits a controversial argument that he made in the book Outliers,

00:01:44.880 one with which you may be familiar as belonging to Malcolm or not, but I'm sure you've heard of it.

00:01:51.620 We'll get to it.

00:01:52.320 And he wonders if he is responsible for creating one of the first steps that dads and moms take on their way to becoming neurotic helicopter parents.

00:02:00.580 You are, Malcolm.

00:02:01.580 You are.

00:02:02.740 We're always going to talk about backlash you got for saying it's really not in your best interest to work only from home.

00:02:08.120 You might want to, like, swing by the office from time to time.

00:02:15.120 Malcolm Gladwell, thank you so much for coming back on.

00:02:17.360 Great to see you.

00:02:18.820 Thank you, Megan.

00:02:19.400 It's my pleasure.

00:02:19.900 So I love that you revisited this theory in Outliers.

00:02:25.040 As the mother of three young children, ages 9, 11, and 12, I read Outliers, and I'm one of those parents that got swept up in it.

00:02:35.460 A couple of things in there.

00:02:36.960 And I love that you take this hard look at it.

00:02:38.840 Did I write a primer for neurotic middle-class helicopter parents?

00:02:43.920 And then you make the point, stop the tyranny of birthdays.

00:02:47.080 If you were somebody who has, quote, red-shirted your child because he was born or she was born in the second half of the year, it may be because of this book.

00:02:56.500 So I think it's hilarious that you went back and took this self-critical look at yourself and your theory.

00:03:01.220 He's good for you.

00:03:02.580 It doesn't mean you were wrong, but you kind of think people may have taken it in the wrong way.

00:03:06.860 Explain.

00:03:07.140 Yeah, so in Outliers, one of the arguments that I make is how much your birthday matters in terms of sports achievement and academic achievement.

00:03:19.300 And there's no question.

00:03:21.560 It's a huge issue.

00:03:22.320 If you've got a room full of 10-year-olds and one kid is born in January and one kid is born in December, the kid born in January has been around for 10%.

00:03:32.800 Their life is 10% longer.

00:03:34.720 That's huge.

00:03:35.520 And when we look at evidence of things like, not just grades, but how likely are you as a kid to be diagnosed with a learning disorder or disciplined or suspended or categorized with, painted with some kind of like dark brush?

00:03:57.220 And what we find overwhelmingly is that kids who are relatively the youngest in their class are hugely proportionately overrepresented in those kind of categories and underrepresented in things like gifted and talented programs.

00:04:11.480 And so it's clearly an issue.

00:04:13.920 The question is, what should you do about it?

00:04:17.020 And when I wrote my book, what I wanted was for schools to come up with thoughtful solutions to this problem, right?

00:04:25.040 So you can imagine, for example, an elementary school might say, oh, if there's such a big difference between an eight-year-old born in January and one born in December, let's divide our classes by birth month.

00:04:39.340 Let's have all the January, February, and March kids in one class and the April, May, and June kids in another class and so on, right?

00:04:46.860 That would be one thoughtful response.

00:04:49.940 That's not what happened.

00:04:50.980 What happened was parents just held their kids back if they were the relatively youngest in the class.

00:04:55.380 That doesn't solve the problem.

00:04:56.820 That just creates another class of kids who are suddenly at the bottom of the barrel, right?

00:05:01.420 So it's like, I was like, this is not what I intended to happen.

00:05:05.220 I wanted, this was a call, this was a cry for institutional change, right?

00:05:10.500 For, you know, if you, I use the example of hockey, that if you look at hockey and lots of other sports,

00:05:15.700 the older kids have this huge advantage and they end up being hugely overrepresented at kind of elite levels.

00:05:21.600 The solution to that is for coaches and scouts to get smarter about adjusting for the fact that a younger kid, relatively younger kid, is going to look like he or she is not as talented when they're very young.

00:05:35.020 And it's not about talent, it's about their age, right?

00:05:37.500 We've got to get smarter about recognizing what talent is.

00:05:40.820 We shouldn't just be holding everybody back, right?

00:05:43.320 Which doesn't solve the problem.

00:05:44.800 So I did this episode of my podcast, giving examples of ways to solve the problem, thoughtful ways of solving the problem, as opposed to just everyone leaving it on parents.

00:05:55.980 We shouldn't be leaving this responsibility of giving your kid a fair chance to the parent, right?

00:06:03.340 That's nuts.

00:06:04.660 Design a system that's thoughtful and intelligent.

00:06:06.760 But here's a question for you, and I loved your episode today, but my question is, at what point do the kids catch up?

00:06:14.360 Because if you say to the school, okay, my eight-year-old now, there's a big difference between him and the kid who was born 11 months earlier.

00:06:23.560 I mean, doesn't that kid always have the advantage over my December baby?

00:06:27.940 Or can you look at sports coaches and teachers and say, no, the data show by 11th grade, physically, all those advantages have evened out.

00:06:38.760 And you should be thinking about him as a future tennis or baseball or football star right now, just one who's going to come to life for you a year later than the guys you're looking at now.

00:06:49.460 You're right.

00:07:19.460 They're surrounded by the smartest kids.

00:07:21.160 They're getting the best teachers.

00:07:23.040 So the other kids, they never catch up.

00:07:25.920 They may catch up physically and biologically, but the kids who had that early advantage are getting the additional advantage of an institutional boost.

00:07:38.600 The same is true in sports.

00:07:42.040 You're on the travel squad at the age of 10, and all of a sudden you're playing twice as many games, better coaches, and you end up being better because of that early advantage.

00:07:52.960 It's a real problem, Megan.

00:07:54.580 I don't mean to diminish it.

00:07:56.560 It's a serious problem.

00:07:57.600 It just requires more thoughtful, to be more thoughtfully addressed.

00:08:03.740 One of the things you point out is when we take these standardized tests on which so many schools base so many things, we don't account for birth date there either.

00:08:12.860 So the third graders have to take the same test, you know, in New York State or Connecticut, where I am now, what have you, even though they may be almost 12 months younger than the kids sitting next to them.

00:08:24.060 And you were saying, what about having the kids who were born in September take the standardized test in September, and the kids who were born in January take it in January?

00:08:35.400 Like, they don't do any of that.

00:08:36.540 It's a good point.

00:08:38.160 Yeah.

00:08:38.440 This is a guy.

00:08:39.400 I was talking to this guy.

00:08:40.320 So England is one of the countries that, at least in the area of sports, has thought about this problem in the most serious and profound way.

00:08:52.500 And so I was chatting with this English guy named Adam Kelly, who's deeply involved in trying to fix this problem in soccer, because he thinks you leave a lot, he puts it, you leave a lot of talent on the table when you don't adjust for these age differences at an early level.

00:09:05.600 Like, there are all these kids who are the relatively youngest in their class.

00:09:08.940 You think that they're slower and shorter and not as talented.

00:09:11.940 And so they totally never get a chance to perform in the soccer field.

00:09:15.300 Anyway, I'm chatting with this guy, and he just makes this point.

00:09:18.160 It never occurred to me.

00:09:18.980 He's like, why on earth do we make middle school kids take a standardized test all at the same time?

00:09:26.520 That's crazy, right?

00:09:28.060 Why would you give that 12-month advantage for an 11-year-old?

00:09:32.700 That's nuts, right?

00:09:33.900 And the idea that it's 2022, we've been doing this for, what, 100 years, and it has yet to occur to anyone that it's impossible to accurately compare 11-year-olds, right, when some of them have a 12-month advantage over others, right?

00:09:51.980 We haven't adjusted for this problem.

00:09:53.380 And I can't believe it's taken a century, and we're still twiddling our thumbs about how to address it.

00:09:59.760 And this is, you acknowledge this in your podcast, that it's led people to make different choices, not just on when to put their child into the school system, because you can, quote, unquote, redshirt them and keep them in preschool longer, what have you.

00:10:12.520 But I will tell you this, when going through IVF, which I used for my three kids, there were moms, I just did it when I wanted to have babies, and when I went to the doctor, I did my best to have them.

00:10:26.460 But there were moms I knew who were trying to game the birth of their children such that they would be born in January or February.

00:10:36.820 Now, I've got a September, a July, and an April, so you can tell I did not game the system at all.

00:10:43.060 But yeah, actually, hold on to my egg or my fertilized embryo until I can use it so that the baby comes in January or February.

00:10:50.540 I mean, it's insane.

00:10:51.840 Yeah.

00:10:52.540 I mean, Megan, it's just so easy for us to correct for this.

00:10:56.460 It really is not that hard.

00:10:58.120 There's this wonderful guy I talked to who's in Australia.

00:11:02.580 Australia is also a country that takes this quite seriously.

00:11:05.040 And he was the guy who's really into – Australia is obsessed with competitive swimming.

00:11:09.400 And he was the guy who looked at the sort of numbers in competitive swimming and just noticed how the kids who were the relatively youngest in every age class were dropping out of the sport.

00:11:20.020 And they just – by the time you hit 13, 14, 15, all the relatively young kids were gone because, you know, they start really early.

00:11:29.220 They got really discouraged.

00:11:30.080 And they thought incorrectly.

00:11:31.780 They had no tennis talent.

00:11:33.340 And he has this idea that you can – it's a very simple way to correct for that.

00:11:37.360 And that is you can figure out what a month or two months or six months of maturity advantage means for an 11-year-old.

00:11:44.860 And then you could just adjust the times at a meet.

00:11:48.100 So you have two sets of times.

00:11:49.320 You have the raw scores.

00:11:51.280 And then you say, okay, we're going to do an age adjustment just so we can get a sense of maybe there's a kid here who's 12 months younger but who's insanely talented.

00:11:59.600 And if we gave him like a handicap in golf, just gave him a handicap or her a handicap, we'd see, oh, my goodness, that kid's really talented.

00:12:07.380 You could do that with test scores.

00:12:08.900 You could just do simple handicaps that just gave a couple extra points to the kids who are 12 months behind or 11 months behind.

00:12:15.260 It's not that hard.

00:12:16.540 It's like this is what drives me nuts.

00:12:19.140 It's like there are so many simple fixes to these kinds of problems that we don't do.

00:12:24.720 And so instead what we force parents to do is to do things like trying to game their IVF or hold their kids back, you know, two extra years in high school.

00:12:34.100 And if they're going to a private school, it's 100 grand.

00:12:36.300 And this is nuts because we can't do a simple adjustment.

00:12:41.120 And also, like, what are you doing to your kid if you're holding back two years and he's now – I realize people are sort of just all holding back.

00:12:48.260 And then it's like this – you point out – I think it was like genetic arms race or age arms race, you call it in your podcast.

00:12:53.680 It's true because like, okay, well, I'm going to hold my kid back.

00:12:55.540 I'm going to hold my kid back.

00:12:56.460 And now the kid who is normally going to be the oldest is the oldest – like he was just average because the other parents who had, you know, July babies or December babies, they held their kids back.

00:13:07.000 So then the one who had the natural age advantage does it.

00:13:09.360 So, yeah, on and on and on it goes.

00:13:10.700 Does nobody want to graduate from high school, Megan?

00:13:13.680 Does nobody want their kids to leave the house?

00:13:15.940 Is that what's going on?

00:13:17.220 But don't you think – if your kid's two years older than the kids in his grade because you're, you know, trying to game the system so much, that could cause a different set of problems that you might not want for him or her.

00:13:28.160 Yeah, so this – I know I have friends with kids in high school and at a high school where there's been a lot of this holding back.

00:13:37.740 And it does create – there's such a wide disparity now in ages.

00:13:42.140 So there are kids now who are, you know, who are shaving in a class with kids who haven't hit puberty.

00:13:50.480 And that's because the – you know, some parents have held their kids not just back one year but back two years.

00:13:55.700 They're coming – they're graduating from high school at 20.

00:13:59.240 I mean, I was – I graduated from college at 20.

00:14:02.540 Yeah, I was 17 when I graduated high school.

00:14:05.420 This is inconceivable to me.

00:14:07.100 So, like, that – and that creates when you have those kinds of – it really messes with the kind of social cohesion of high school when you have these big disparities.

00:14:17.760 At that age, when you're 16, 17, two years is a huge amount of time.

00:14:22.300 And we're really kind of making the kind of social life of kids really difficult by having this kind of willy-nilly, some parents hold back, some don't.

00:14:32.160 Like I said, it's time for this.

00:14:34.360 I could see how you could do a fair amount in academics to even this playing field.

00:14:40.580 But I'm not sure about athletics.

00:14:42.720 Like, I think about it, even if I look at my son, September 09, baby, so he's 12 now, he is on the smaller side.

00:14:54.120 Like, he hasn't hit puberty yet.

00:14:55.920 You know, he's still scrawny.

00:14:57.460 But there are kids in his grade who are his exact age, you know, September, October, baby, same year, who are bigger than he – who have already hit puberty.

00:15:06.740 Right?

00:15:06.920 So, like, puberty is a factor.

00:15:09.380 And if you're on the – you know, if you're eight months into puberty, you look a lot different than somebody who hasn't touched it yet.

00:15:15.400 So, like, you're never going to be able to really eliminate that kind of factor.

00:15:21.340 Yeah.

00:15:21.920 All you can do – so, you're right.

00:15:23.780 You can't make it perfect.

00:15:24.880 But at the very least, let's solve the problem of – let's solve the problem we can solve, which is – so, here's a good example of an idea, a really wonderful idea that I talk about in the show.

00:15:36.160 This only works for individual sports, although conceivably it could work for team sports.

00:15:40.540 So, imagine your kid is a runner.

00:15:43.940 And right now, there's age class for running, right?

00:15:47.200 And it's – let's say the cutoff date is September 1st.

00:15:50.940 And on September 1st, you graduate to the next age class.

00:15:54.720 What they're starting to do now in some sports, in England in particular, is you graduate on your birthday.

00:16:03.220 So, everyone is moving up to the next age class on their birthday as opposed to on the same day.

00:16:08.400 So, everybody – what that means is everybody has a couple of months as the youngest in their age cohort, a couple of months as the middle, and then a couple of months as the eldest.

00:16:19.080 So, everyone has an equal experience of being – going through all three stages.

00:16:24.100 And that's really important because there are actually advantages to being the youngest in your age cohort.

00:16:29.420 It forces you to be creative, to learn strategy, to figure out how to win when you don't have a natural advantage.

00:16:35.720 There's also advantage to being the eldest.

00:16:38.060 That's where you get confidence, right?

00:16:40.000 So, what you want is your kid exposed to both a period of being one of the youngest where they have to use their head and think about what it means to overcome a disadvantage.

00:16:49.700 And you want them to have a period of being the oldest so they can get that boost of confidence.

00:16:55.100 That's a very simple idea that we could – that could really revolutionize a lot of age class sports.

00:17:00.380 You know, it got me thinking to my own upbringing.

00:17:02.120 I was a November baby and I was not redshirted, so I was always one of the youngest in my class.

00:17:08.760 And I had – you know, I didn't have parents who were pushing me academically.

00:17:14.600 My dad died.

00:17:16.000 And I know you just lost your dad too, so my condolences to you.

00:17:20.360 So, my dad died when I was a sophomore in high school unexpectedly.

00:17:23.980 And, you know, you take the SAT about a year after that.

00:17:26.660 My dad died in December of my sophomore year.

00:17:29.140 So, you take the SAT about a year after that.

00:17:31.100 And literally, Malcolm, I showed up to take the SAT.

00:17:33.660 My mom was a grieving widow who was 44 years old.

00:17:36.680 My dad was no longer around.

00:17:38.540 I was young for my class.

00:17:40.440 And I had no idea the SAT was even that day.

00:17:42.620 My friend was like, here, you need a number two pencil.

00:17:44.640 I'm like, what for?

00:17:45.580 She's like, it's the SAT today.

00:17:47.040 I'm like, what?

00:17:47.620 Oh, that's important.

00:17:49.060 Okay.

00:17:49.800 So, I sat and I just started filling in boxes.

00:17:51.920 And you'll be shocked to learn I didn't do that well.

00:17:53.840 I was fine.

00:17:54.580 I got around 80th percentile net, which I thought was fine given that –

00:17:59.540 What are you just telling us your SAT score right now, Megan?

00:18:01.860 No, no.

00:18:02.580 I bombed math, but I did well in English and verbal.

00:18:07.640 You know, that was basically how it wound up.

00:18:09.280 But my point is that would set me on a track that would be very different than if I had aced

00:18:15.140 the SAT.

00:18:16.240 And all these factors go into it, and you don't even think about it.

00:18:18.960 You know, as an adult, I'm just like, I guess I'm not as smart as the people who got into

00:18:22.540 all these Ivy League schools.

00:18:23.600 And I know how you feel about the ranking systems.

00:18:25.700 I love that piece of your research.

00:18:27.300 But, you know, it just – this whole body of research that you're responsible for has

00:18:32.040 given a lot of us pause and reason to think back on, geez, my case.

00:18:36.300 Maybe I was too harsh on myself.

00:18:37.860 Maybe a lot of us have been.

00:18:39.100 Well, it's clear – so there's a really lovely book that was written by a friend of

00:18:44.620 mine, David Epstein, and it's called Range.

00:18:50.000 And in Range, he looks at all of the data on elite athletes.

00:18:55.700 And the question he uses – he has this kind of paradigm.

00:18:57.920 He says, Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, two of the greatest athletes of the last generation,

00:19:03.400 both had profoundly different paths to greatness.

00:19:08.320 Tiger played nothing but golf from the beginning, and Roger Federer played, you know, every sport

00:19:14.120 under the sun and didn't really specialize in tennis until he was 15 or so.

00:19:19.260 And David asked the question, which of those two very different models is more predictive

00:19:26.040 of eventual success, elite status?

00:19:30.400 And the answer is the Roger Federer model.

00:19:32.160 In other words, when it comes to sports like that, what you really want to do is to delay

00:19:37.280 the moment when you specialize.

00:19:39.940 And you want to get a really broad – I mean, Roger Federer played a lot of soccer, and you

00:19:44.500 can see his soccer kind of skills in his tennis.

00:19:48.520 He's got immaculate footwork, you know, the greatest footwork of any tennis player of his

00:19:51.940 generation.

00:19:52.740 You want a broad base, and you want to hold off on trying to decide what sport you want

00:19:57.040 to specialize at for as long as possible.

00:19:59.680 And that's a really interesting idea, and it should be, I think, applied in academics

00:20:04.600 as well.

00:20:05.500 We're rushing things.

00:20:08.240 We're so caught up in the competition, and we think you can tell at seven or eight or nine,

00:20:13.720 or even at 17, what someone's potential is and what their path ought to be.

00:20:19.240 The truth is, Megan, when you took the ISAT at however old you were, 16 or 17, the world,

00:20:25.580 you and the world, and your mom, had no idea what was in store for you, right?

00:20:30.580 Like, no clue.

00:20:31.980 And that should be – that's an important lesson.

00:20:34.620 It's like we're engaged in this fool's game of trying to make a prediction about human

00:20:38.960 beings at this incredibly young age, and human beings are just more complicated than that.

00:20:45.860 Well, you know, you're also responsible for the Tiger Woods phenomenon, because chapter

00:20:51.660 three of Outliers gets into the 10,000 hours.

00:20:54.820 I don't know.

00:20:55.360 Wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:20:56.880 I'm going to defend myself here.

00:20:58.680 So I make the observation in Outliers that 10,000 hours is a kind of – it's a rough proxy

00:21:05.180 for how much preparation you need to succeed, but I didn't say what the preparation should

00:21:09.860 be.

00:21:10.880 So it doesn't say to be a great tennis player, you need 10,000 hours of tennis preparation.

00:21:17.700 It says to be a great tennis player, you need 10,000 hours of preparation.

00:21:21.920 So what Roger Federer would argue correctly is that the best preparation he could do at the

00:21:28.940 age of 11 for his career as a pro tennis player was to play soccer.

00:21:33.560 Soccer was building the – and basketball and all these sports that built – gave him

00:21:39.220 a wide base of skills that prepared him beautifully for the specialization that took place when

00:21:45.920 he was 16 and 17.

00:21:47.940 You know, you – so I – does it follow that you've got to do the exact thing you want

00:21:54.360 to be great at for 10,000 hours?

00:21:55.960 It means you have to prepare.

00:21:57.420 Like, I – you know, it took me 10,000 hours of training to be a great journalist, but that

00:22:03.400 wasn't all writing.

00:22:04.780 That was also reading and learning how to report and learning how to listen to people and learning

00:22:09.260 how to organize my day and all those kinds of things fed into what it took to master my

00:22:14.020 profession.

00:22:15.000 So I will defend my – I will defend myself on the question.

00:22:19.340 Chapter three, I stand by.

00:22:20.840 No, you're right.

00:22:22.800 And I think about – like on Wall Street, my husband's not on Wall Street, but most of

00:22:28.300 his friends are.

00:22:29.340 And a lot of these guys, you know, we graduated high school in 88, my husband 89, and went

00:22:37.080 to school in the early 90s and so on.

00:22:38.780 So a lot of these guys were coming of age at a different time in our culture when, you

00:22:43.260 know, if you were a star lacrosse player, you were going to get a great job on Wall Street,

00:22:47.480 right?

00:22:47.580 You know what I mean?

00:22:47.880 Sort of, you know, that whole pipeline.

00:22:50.080 And some people resented that fact.

00:22:52.300 Some people benefited from that fact.

00:22:54.140 But when I look around at the guys like his friends who have made it on Wall Street, that

00:22:58.940 experience actually was not – it was not irrelevant to their success.

00:23:03.600 Like learning how to handle life immersed in a bunch of competitive guys, learning how to

00:23:11.540 be funny in that group, hang with that group without being weird or, you know, too outside

00:23:17.680 the lines.

00:23:18.500 That actually is an important skill to survive in certain jobs on Wall Street.

00:23:22.600 And you look at certain, like, great salesmen.

00:23:24.940 Maybe they – I don't know what the history could be, but maybe all those years, you know,

00:23:29.380 hanging with their buddies playing streetball really helped.

00:23:32.500 They learned a certain social system and a way of talking to people that would help them

00:23:38.420 emote, relate, you know, sort of dazzle in a way those of us who are more introverted

00:23:43.660 never learned, right?

00:23:44.640 So, like, the 10,000 hours could be made up of all sorts of different things that you

00:23:47.520 may not even realize are part of your 10,000 hours.

00:23:49.460 Yeah, no, I think that's – I think that's absolutely right, that we need to – that's

00:23:54.560 another thing, if I was revisiting – if I was rewriting my book Outliers today, I think

00:23:59.420 I would have made that point more explicitly, that we need to think about preparation broadly

00:24:05.480 and not narrowly.

00:24:07.540 And you're absolutely right.

00:24:08.740 There's a million jobs out there, you know, there's a whole – where there's a whole

00:24:12.740 sort of set of soft social skills that are essential to success.

00:24:16.860 You know, B, it's not just about – you think about being a doctor, you know, the way we

00:24:22.460 select doctors for – would-be doctors for medical school is to make sure they're cognitively

00:24:28.220 capable, right?

00:24:28.920 We – they have to have really high grades and test scores and have mastered all these

00:24:32.720 subjects, but that's only a fraction of what it means to be a great doctor.

00:24:36.540 The doctors that really connect with patients are those who developed social skills, who are

00:24:41.340 warm, empathetic, who can listen, who are curious, who have patience, all those kinds

00:24:46.680 of – so it's like even there, it's – when we say 10,000 hours of preparation is what

00:24:51.660 it takes to be a great doctor, we're just – we're not talking about medical school.

00:24:56.340 We're also – we're also talking about all of these kinds of social skills.

00:25:00.700 I'm thinking about my – I'm looking at my assistant, Abby, here, who's like amazing

00:25:03.800 with people.

00:25:04.640 She's a great people person.

00:25:05.800 She's an extrovert.

00:25:06.680 She can handle any sort of personal issue.

00:25:09.440 And that's – that comes to her naturally.

00:25:12.280 So she's put herself out there more in the world in terms of engaging with people.

00:25:15.880 I, notwithstanding this job, am more of an introvert socially.

00:25:19.000 And so it's better for me to have somebody like her dealing with people on my behalf.

00:25:23.080 She'll do better.

00:25:23.740 She'll get better results.

00:25:25.160 You know, it's like you never know what skill you're either secretly or openly developing

00:25:29.900 that could really come back to help you.

00:25:32.500 And it could be as simple as – I mean, in my case, I have a fair amount of knowledge

00:25:36.360 of like weird pop culture.

00:25:37.720 Like I watch a lot of Brady Bunch.

00:25:38.800 Well, I think that's helped me in my current job.

00:25:41.920 I haven't – I can't exactly articulate how, Malcolm, but I just have a gut feeling.

00:25:46.540 Yeah.

00:25:46.960 I love that you're an introvert.

00:25:48.280 So if you – I consider myself one as well, but the definition of an introvert is someone

00:25:53.480 for whom social interaction is taxing as opposed to energizing.

00:25:59.260 So are both of us at the end of this just going to go and take a nap if I can try and recover

00:26:04.640 from all of this relentless socializing?

00:26:07.080 But this is different.

00:26:07.640 Listen, this actually doesn't tax me at all because this is professional.

00:26:10.200 Like in this forum, I feel like I've got my superhero cape on.

00:26:14.420 But socially, like tonight, I got to go to a dinner at my son's school.

00:26:19.260 It's the beginning of the school year.

00:26:20.380 You go, you meet the other parents.

00:26:22.000 That's stressful for me.

00:26:23.140 Like I feel stressed about it.

00:26:24.400 I have to do it, but I don't really want to do it.

00:26:27.740 Yeah.

00:26:28.080 Yeah.

00:26:28.420 Why don't you take – you should take Abby with you.

00:26:30.640 Have her do it.

00:26:31.260 Oh, my God.

00:26:31.640 It would be so much easier.

00:26:33.740 People might find me slightly odd.

00:26:38.780 She never goes anywhere without her assistant.

00:26:41.780 I'll just lean into that.

00:26:42.920 I'll be like, well, I'm an ice queen.

00:26:44.100 In case you hadn't read, I don't really speak to people any longer.

00:26:48.300 Anyway, all right.

00:26:48.900 Let me pause it here.

00:26:49.780 I'm going to take a quick break and so much more to discuss.

00:26:51.980 I'm really enjoying this.

00:26:52.860 Malcolm Gladwell, you're a genius.

00:26:53.940 And I so appreciate everything you write and say.

00:26:56.320 Much, much more with Mr. Gladwell.

00:26:59.200 Or as he calls himself on his Facebook posting, it's like the competitor to Substack.

00:27:05.260 O, M-G.

00:27:07.700 Get it?

00:27:08.140 O-H, M-G.

00:27:09.740 One of the things I love about you, Malcolm, is like yours truly, you're not afraid to touch the third rails.

00:27:21.440 And I mean the thirtiest of the 30 rails.

00:27:25.680 I think it was talking to strangers.

00:27:28.200 You took on the Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State.

00:27:31.540 You took a hard look at the Sandra Bland police-involved shooting incident.

00:27:37.020 Well, it wasn't shooting.

00:27:38.120 It was a very negative interaction that led to her taking her life.

00:27:41.820 In any event, you don't care about touching the things that are going to upset people.

00:27:45.300 And you come at it from sort of a factual, hard, analytical angle.

00:27:49.880 Trying to usually, I think, give people the benefit of the doubt.

00:27:53.840 So that brings me to your magic wand experiment that you're doing.

00:27:59.060 You've got a couple of shows in season seven released over the summer.

00:28:02.680 If you had a magic wand and you went to scientists, what experiment would you design that you cannot because of ethics?

00:28:09.560 You know, those things like ethics.

00:28:11.100 So this is all imaginary, just so that the audience understands.

00:28:14.240 No one's actually doing this stuff to people.

00:28:16.620 But I did think a lot of these were fascinating, including the one with child psychologist, Dr. Joyce Benenson, who had a thought about gender.

00:28:28.540 Very timely, given the way we're talking about gender in today's day and age.

00:28:32.620 So what what did she want to do?

00:28:35.000 She wanted to.

00:28:38.400 So I was calling up all these scientists because I had this idea that every scientist must have in the back of their mind a magic wand, an experiment they would love to do if they could wave away, you know, financial constraints, laws of nature, constraints, ethical constraints.

00:28:57.580 They must have one.

00:28:58.360 That was my theory.

00:28:58.940 So I, I, I, it turns out they all do.

00:29:03.820 So I was just, everyone I called was like, oh yeah, I got one.

00:29:06.240 So I called up this woman who's a very, very, uh, uh, uh, one of the leading child psychologists in the, in the country.

00:29:15.080 And she said she wanted to do the following experiment.

00:29:18.900 She wanted to take a thousand baby boys and at birth do a operation on them so that they, uh, resemble girls, right?

00:29:35.780 Just make some anatomical changes.

00:29:37.840 Um, and then she wants to do the same for the girls, take the girls and, and sort of, you know, change them magically.

00:29:45.540 So they resemble boys.

00:29:46.680 So the parents of the boys think they're raising girls and the parents of the girls think they're raising boys.

00:29:52.560 Right.

00:29:53.040 And what she wanted to do is let the experiment run for 10 years and to figure out, would it make any difference?

00:30:00.900 In other words, if you're, if you're, if your parents think you were a boy and you're actually a girl, does that make, does that have any impact whatsoever on the way you socialize, the way you turn out, the way you self-identify, the way you behave and if, and vice versa, right?

00:30:17.560 And her argument was, she strongly believed that it would make no difference.

00:30:21.760 In other words, the way parents treat children along gender lines is ultimately irrelevant.

00:30:28.000 A child is who a child wants to be.

00:30:31.480 Um, and you know, a parent, the fact that a parent might dress you in a dress or give you, uh, you know, take you to construction sites to watch front end loaders or throw a ball at you or whatever, whatever things they do to you, based on what they believe your gender to be is irrelevant in how you turn out.

00:30:50.300 Now I thought, do I know whether that's true?

00:30:52.580 I have no idea.

00:30:53.020 I thought it was super interesting that one of the leading developmental psychologists in the country thought this would be an interesting experiment to do.

00:31:01.540 And she, what was also interesting was that she said, you know, lots and lots and lots and lots of people would be upset by this experiment and would dispute it.

00:31:10.140 And I thought that was interesting too, because I now have a, uh, a daughter and, um, thank you.

00:31:19.600 And I sort of get it now, like they are who they are.

00:31:23.760 It doesn't really matter.

00:31:26.020 I could dress her in boys clothes and take her to football games and, uh, you know, do whatever parents theoretically do with boys.

00:31:35.640 She's going to be whoever she wants to be.

00:31:37.740 I mean, I don't, I'm not sure I have much to do with it.

00:31:40.560 But my job is simply to kind of, you know, keep her, love her and keep her safe and feed her and all those kinds of things.

00:31:47.780 But like, in terms of how she turns out, in terms of her gender identification, I don't think I matter.

00:31:55.420 You're not in control.

00:31:56.960 Yeah.

00:31:57.200 That's, I think, the argument that, that this researcher was trying to make, which, which is parents should relax a little.

00:32:04.120 They're not, you know, they're, it's not up to them how their children choose, choose to identify later in life.

00:32:11.760 I just thought that was interesting.

00:32:13.340 This reminded me of that, you know, that case, the guy wound up going on Oprah.

00:32:19.060 Um, he was a twin, two boys, twins.

00:32:23.140 And they were five years older than I am, I think.

00:32:26.360 So they were born in 65 and they had to be circumcised.

00:32:31.780 They weren't going to be circumcised, but then they had some sort of an issue with urination.

00:32:36.140 And the parents brought them in to be circumcised and they brought the one boy first and there was a horrible accident.

00:32:42.040 And they lived and they didn't have the second boy circumcised.

00:32:45.500 And then they lived with it, with the, like the deformed penis for a while.

00:32:49.020 And they said, oh my God, we can't.

00:32:50.300 And they brought him, they, they consulted famed sexologist money was his name.

00:32:54.960 Money, John money, John money, John money at Hopkins.

00:32:58.960 What should we do?

00:32:59.900 And this guy was making his living on these types of theories and experiments about, can you change gender or blah, blah, blah.

00:33:06.500 And he said, the thing to do is to have a sex change operation performed on your baby, you know, basically give him a vagina and raise him as a girl.

00:33:14.680 And these, you know, well-meaning parents, they were young.

00:33:17.040 They had had the kids young and they might've been still in their teens even.

00:33:20.300 And not particularly sophisticated did it.

00:33:24.480 So they have, it's such a weird situation where they have the identical twin still in a boy's body, living as a boy.

00:33:31.600 And his twin is now in a girl's body and they've chosen to raise her as a girl.

00:33:36.960 And it's, and the whole, the long and the short of it is jumping to the, you know, the end.

00:33:40.980 And they couldn't, they couldn't do it.

00:33:43.540 This, this boy who was being raised, I wrote down the name because I looked it up before today.

00:33:48.940 They raised him as Brenda, but he was Bruce.

00:33:52.300 He was born Bruce.

00:33:53.480 And Brenda knew she was Bruce.

00:33:55.580 Brenda knew that she was not a girl.

00:33:57.920 Brenda did all boy things.

00:34:00.000 Brenda never felt like she fed in with the other girls.

00:34:02.020 And Brenda became extremely depressed.

00:34:04.180 And by the time Brenda hit adolescence or around 14, they told the boys, both twins, what they had done.

00:34:10.680 Brenda was relieved.

00:34:12.040 Brenda was like, I knew it wasn't Brenda.

00:34:13.880 And wound up actually going to David.

00:34:15.900 I don't know.

00:34:16.260 She didn't like Bruce.

00:34:17.180 Well, I'm not sure what happened, but it wound up very sad.

00:34:19.920 Bruce, David, now David, got married, tried to live as a man, tried to sort of reclaim that, you know, his identity.

00:34:28.160 And so much damage had been done and wound up dying by suicide at age 38.

00:34:34.400 So that's, look, that's not the definitive study because we don't do these studies and they're unethical.

00:34:39.600 But, you know, to the extent it has been done, it has been done disastrously.

00:34:43.380 And one's true gender refused to go away, you know, in a setting where parents really did their level best to make it.

00:34:52.300 Yeah.

00:34:52.620 No, I mean, I think that was the point of the research I was talking to.

00:34:56.200 That's her, that's the point she's trying to make.

00:34:58.700 That, you know, there was a point in our period in our history where, like that guy, John Money, he really thought that your sexuality, something as essential to who you are as your sexuality, could be created out of thin air by the way your parents dress you and the...

00:35:16.060 Your gender.

00:35:16.860 Your gender.

00:35:17.280 Yeah, the kind of identity that's kind of created for you by, and this is not true.

00:35:24.880 We're dealing with things that are much more fundamental than that.

00:35:27.160 But to my point, the broader point I was interested in was one that, it's sort of a theme that kind of runs through a lot of the season.

00:35:37.560 It's that this is a reminder to parents about the limits on their influences on their children, right?

00:35:46.920 It's like parents need to be reminded.

00:35:49.660 You're not in, you can, there's some things you can control, but you can't engineer the child that you want.

00:35:59.300 That's wonderful to know.

00:36:00.080 Yeah, really, really important thing.

00:36:02.840 And that also touches, you know, when we were talking about the, before about holding kids, redshirting kids in, a lot of the redshirting impetus is about the attempt by parents to engineer an outcome for their child.

00:36:15.820 And that's why, you know, I think we need a far more thoughtful and intelligent approach when it comes to redshirting, because it's not best practice.

00:36:26.080 We don't want parents having that notion in the back of their head that if only they pull this lever and this lever and this lever, they're going to spit out a perfect child or a successful child.

00:36:35.640 You can change behavior.

00:36:37.420 You can certainly teach manners.

00:36:39.780 You can teach ethics.

00:36:41.560 You can teach what's acceptable behavior in, you know, a polite society.

00:36:45.380 But you can't change nature.

00:36:47.760 You can't change one's nature.

00:36:49.360 You know, like the kid who's huge energy and can't sit down is constantly going and going and going.

00:36:54.540 You're never going to turn that kid into low energy, you know, and and vice versa.

00:37:01.060 You know, the kid who's relaxed, like it's better to lean into the nature that comes to you and help that kid figure out how they can make the most of that particular makeup.

00:37:12.360 Yeah, yeah, I agree.

00:37:13.400 Yeah.

00:37:14.040 So funny, you know, that as I'm a first time parent.

00:37:17.420 And so all of this stuff that I, you know, I used to kind of like, you know, wave my hands in the air and pretend that I knew what I was talking about when it came to parenting issues.

00:37:26.260 Now I'm actually doing it.

00:37:30.200 It's been quite a series of revelations.

00:37:33.340 How old is she, Malcolm?

00:37:34.380 She's like a year?

00:37:36.100 Just about a year.

00:37:37.740 Ah, so how?

00:37:38.940 About to walk.

00:37:39.760 About to walk.

00:37:40.940 How has that?

00:37:41.920 How's that been for you?

00:37:42.820 Because it can be overwhelming.

00:37:45.080 Oh, it's been fantastic.

00:37:46.020 I mean, she's delightful.

00:37:47.520 So I think, I think we got lucky.

00:37:50.720 But, but I mean, I think all parents think their children are delightful, but.

00:37:54.640 No, they don't.

00:37:55.340 That's not true.

00:37:56.440 Is that not true?

00:37:58.280 I hope your kids aren't listening.

00:38:00.620 I mean, like periods of delight, but maybe not universally delightful.

00:38:05.860 No, it's just been, I mean, I, the, the thing that goes, that I've been going through is the thing that every parent goes through, which is you discover all these things and you think, oh, I'm, you know,

00:38:15.880 I've discovered some previously unknown truth about parenting.

00:38:19.720 And of course, everyone else went through exactly the same revelation, right?

00:38:25.080 So, you know, the, the big revelation that, oh, even at a year, I kind of can tell how this little creature is going to turn out, right?

00:38:34.560 Like that's so weird that there's something essential already there, right?

00:38:39.060 That that's kind of.

00:38:39.700 That is so true.

00:38:40.560 All three of mine have the same personality now that they did when they were one year old.

00:38:44.180 You could, you could definitely project it.

00:38:46.000 And I don't know.

00:38:46.840 And it's not even necessarily like, oh, this one's Doug or this one's me.

00:38:51.060 You know, it's not that either.

00:38:52.140 Like they come fully formed with a totally different nature, personality.

00:38:57.700 You know, they say that kids inherit mannerisms, but they don't inherit personalities in, in most cases.

00:39:04.200 So it's like, you may be dealing with something that's totally unfamiliar to you.

00:39:07.380 So I'm, I'm already bracing for it.

00:39:11.960 So where are you living now?

00:39:13.180 Are you in still in New York city?

00:39:14.880 I live upstate.

00:39:16.380 Okay.

00:39:17.500 We moved up actually before COVID.

00:39:20.420 And then that's from my, I work out of upstate and yeah, I sort of, we've, we've relocated.

00:39:29.860 Those are my people upstate New York.

00:39:31.520 That's where I'm from first 10 years in Syracuse and the rest in Albany.

00:39:34.000 So I know that area.

00:39:34.960 Well, it's very beautiful.

00:39:36.000 Upstate New York doesn't get enough credit for how gorgeous it is.

00:39:38.740 Having spent a lot of time in the, in the beautiful Montana.

00:39:40.860 I feel like I can speak to this.

00:39:42.380 It's truly one of the most beautiful States in the U.

00:39:44.680 I had not realized you started out in Syracuse.

00:39:48.680 First 10 years.

00:39:49.620 My dad taught at the university there.

00:39:52.060 And then he took a job at SUNY Albany.

00:39:54.560 So we moved to the tundra farther East of Albany, New York.

00:39:59.720 I've only lived in frigidly cold cities, uh, except for like the year I did in Virginia.

00:40:05.700 Yeah.

00:40:06.260 Yeah.

00:40:06.680 Oh, that's funny.

00:40:07.320 I didn't know that.

00:40:08.140 So what's the, now at the risk of probing too far into your personal life, are you,

00:40:13.680 is there a, is there a spouse or a partner?

00:40:15.900 Is that, do I get to know like what the family situation looks like?

00:40:19.220 Yes, there is.

00:40:20.160 Yes, there is.

00:40:20.980 Yes, absolutely.

00:40:22.520 Uh, but, uh, no, you're not getting any more information that she's very, very private.

00:40:27.580 So I think I, I will respect that in a moment.

00:40:31.040 And, but are you, you guys are together and raising your baby together?

00:40:34.700 Yes.

00:40:35.260 Oh yeah.

00:40:36.680 And it's like, well, seriously, thank God.

00:40:41.280 Cause it's a lot easier when you're on your own and a lot of people do it by choice now,

00:40:45.480 but a lot of people do it because a tragedy struck it's, I don't understand how those single

00:40:49.920 parents do it.

00:40:50.460 I have such respect for them because it is so much work, so much work.

00:40:55.420 And you do have a lot of responsibility.

00:40:56.660 And so the, the thought to just around it out that perhaps not everything that's going

00:41:00.700 to happen with this child is actually on you.

00:41:03.720 You know, perhaps if they're high strung, they're just going to be high strung.

00:41:07.140 Or if they're, I don't know, like not that athletic, whatever it is, whatever thing you're

00:41:11.560 beating yourself up on that you need to change, you need to change.

00:41:14.620 Maybe you don't, maybe you just need a lot of support.

00:41:16.680 Well, it reminds me, you know, when I was in my thirties, I used to go to see a therapist

00:41:21.720 and of course they therapists do this therapist did what therapists like to do, which is to

00:41:27.020 invite you to blame all of your problems on your parents.

00:41:30.040 And it's, it's awfully kind of enticing to do that because it's a convenient explanation

00:41:36.580 for all the things you don't want to take responsibility for.

00:41:38.700 But now that I'm actually a parent, I sort of see how hollow that is.

00:41:43.020 Like, it was really unfair for me to blame things on my parents at that age for, not

00:41:50.660 just me, for any, you know, go ahead.

00:41:54.580 And I was going to say, I was thinking about my own magic wand experience, experiment.

00:41:57.720 Like, what would I do?

00:41:58.500 I'm not a scientist, but I talk a lot on the show about how it's somewhat facetiously that

00:42:04.560 you need to, your kids need to be somewhat damaged in order to be successful.

00:42:08.760 This is my own personal hypothesis that if everything's too perfect, they're probably

00:42:14.060 not going to be that successful.

00:42:15.120 There's something that needs to be in order to create drive in a, in a human being, something

00:42:20.100 they need to overcome or feel like they got to do better on.

00:42:23.900 And so to me, I, like, if I could do the magic wand, I'd, I'd have a version where, you know,

00:42:30.360 trying to figure out how much damage is the right amount.

00:42:33.640 Like, you don't want to crush them, but you want to create a couple of issues that they

00:42:38.900 need to overcome.

00:42:41.200 This is why no one's hiring me to work in a lab.

00:42:45.460 Well, there's a, uh, there, the phrase that psychologists use to describe what you just

00:42:50.340 talked about is called desirable difficulty and the desirable difficulty.

00:42:54.620 There's a whole kind of, um, uh, literature on that.

00:42:58.220 And that is, it's, it's the easiest way to think about this is in terms of learning.

00:43:03.720 So is it useful if you're trying to master a subject to have some period of struggle at

00:43:10.620 the beginning?

00:43:11.660 And the answer is it does seem to be useful.

00:43:14.480 So I remember, for example, the first time I, we, there were teaching a long time.

00:43:20.340 division in public, in, in public school.

00:43:23.380 And I, um, I, I'm the, you know, my dad's a mathematician.

00:43:27.700 So I was, I was, uh, ashamed when I struggled.

00:43:34.160 I remember, I remember to this day sitting in class and looking at the, at the blackboard

00:43:38.300 and thinking, I don't understand what's going on.

00:43:41.160 And this is awful because I should, you know, my dad is doing teaching math at the university.

00:43:46.480 This is a, you know, all this kind of stuff.

00:43:48.640 And the result of that though, was I took math really seriously and I, it made me kind

00:43:55.140 of work harder.

00:43:56.340 It made me, uh, go and talk to my father about math, you know, all kinds of good things happen

00:44:01.280 because there was that moment when I realized this wasn't going to come easy.

00:44:05.080 That's a small example, but there are, there's a whole literature pointing out how useful,

00:44:10.500 um, that kind of, now, if the struggle is too great, then it's, it's obviously a problem,

00:44:17.100 right?

00:44:17.340 If I was, if I was dyslexic and all the numbers were backwards, that's a very different kind

00:44:22.900 of difficulty.

00:44:23.400 If I don't, if I can't see the blackboard, cause I'm my, you know, I have, I've, I've,

00:44:28.740 I've, I should have glasses and no one's giving me glasses.

00:44:31.360 That's another kind of problem.

00:44:32.560 Right.

00:44:33.160 So you don't want the, that's why they use the phrase desirable difficulty.

00:44:36.740 It's, it's to your point, it's figuring out how much, what's the right amount of friction

00:44:43.520 that we can, that we can introduce into a learning process that makes the learning process more

00:44:50.460 meaningful to the learner.

00:44:51.960 That's the question.

00:44:52.740 Yes, that's exactly right.

00:44:54.000 How much friction, and I'm not talking about just, you know, yelling at your kid.

00:44:57.560 I'm talking about when something negative happens in their life.

00:45:00.840 You know, I, my first instinct is of course, I don't want my child hurt, but by the very quickly

00:45:05.520 thereafter, I think, oh no, this is good.

00:45:07.480 This is good.

00:45:08.160 This is the fuel that he or she needs in order to become wiser, but B,

00:45:13.840 maybe become more competitive or make better choices.

00:45:16.840 I think back to this day, if I hadn't been so badly bullied at my seventh grade year of

00:45:21.040 middle school, I don't think I'd be where I am today.

00:45:24.460 I certainly would not have become a lawyer, which was instrumental in me becoming a journalist.

00:45:28.400 I had shit to prove, you know, I had things I was working out and probably still am to this day.

00:45:34.700 And it's probably one of the things that makes me confront bullies pretty unmercelessly

00:45:39.040 and, and for my whole professional life.

00:45:41.120 So would I give it up?

00:45:42.300 No.

00:45:42.580 Do I want my child to be mercilessly bullied all over her seventh grade year?

00:45:46.340 Absolutely not.

00:45:47.360 But there's a piece of it where you're like, how far can we get?

00:45:50.420 How much bullying can they take where they get the, I used to say desirable difficulty,

00:45:55.260 but not so much that they can't recover.

00:45:58.300 Yeah.

00:45:58.660 Yeah.

00:45:59.120 Yeah.

00:45:59.480 And that's the, I'm realizing, yes, you're Megan, this is all you're, you're just preparing

00:46:04.380 me for parenthood here.

00:46:05.800 This is all very useful.

00:46:07.120 So yeah.

00:46:07.800 And your next book, which needs to be on your daughter and me, I think we can both learn

00:46:11.920 a lot.

00:46:12.600 Megan taught me about parenting.

00:46:16.620 That's not a book anybody's going to write.

00:46:18.060 Maybe Abby.

00:46:18.800 She might.

00:46:19.260 She, she has to listen to me all the time.

00:46:21.460 Malcolm's staying with us for the rest of the show.

00:46:23.360 We're going to squeeze in a quick break.

00:46:25.020 So fun to have you here.

00:46:26.540 And don't forget folks, while I have you, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius

00:46:30.060 XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at noon East, the full video show and clips by

00:46:34.960 subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly can get the audio podcast

00:46:40.360 too.

00:46:40.620 If that's your jam, follow and download at Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever

00:46:45.080 you get your podcasts.

00:46:45.940 If you, if you go there, you're going to find all of our archives, including the first time

00:46:49.900 Malcolm was on.

00:46:50.800 That was in July of last year as episode one 33, just to make it easy on you.

00:46:56.460 And one other thing you should know, go to Megan Kelly.com.

00:47:00.720 If you would like to get a fun email from me on Fridays, which has the week, the week's

00:47:06.400 news in one minute or less, not going to waste your time, but just the news of the week in

00:47:10.960 one minute or less, and maybe some updates on our show on Strudwick, uh, and some, some

00:47:18.100 other fun behind the scenes.

00:47:19.480 Thanks.

00:47:20.000 It'll be a good way for us to engage directly with each other without having to use Apple.

00:47:27.740 So Malcolm, one of the things that you take on in revisionist history in the podcast is,

00:47:33.900 um, this is interesting.

00:47:35.700 Mary Mitchell gone with the wind and a star is born and how all these things may be connected

00:47:41.760 and drunk driving has a seam in the story as well.

00:47:46.140 At first I'm like, how on earth is this man going to tie all these things together?

00:47:50.440 But you do it.

00:47:51.660 And what I love about the podcast is it's entertaining.

00:47:54.280 It's well-produced.

00:47:55.420 You've got clips.

00:47:56.420 We, we, we hear from, um, Mitchell, we hear from the, like clips from the movies and you

00:48:02.280 really set it up and you have people who are experts on these eras and so on, like weighing

00:48:06.640 in.

00:48:06.900 So just give us like a, a bird's eye view of that episode.

00:48:11.160 Cause I think people might be really interested in this.

00:48:14.060 So it all started because years ago I read in some book on Hollywood, the fact that they

00:48:25.100 changed the original ending of a star is born.

00:48:28.340 So the script, Dorothy, Dorothy Parker, the famous, you know, comedian, uh, uh, New Yorker

00:48:34.640 writer wit, she wrote the, one of the first drafts of that.

00:48:38.580 And then at the last moment they bring in these two kids and they completely rewrite the ending.

00:48:43.480 And one of the things they take out in the first stars one.

00:48:47.680 So this is stars one has been made four times.

00:48:49.920 Right.

00:48:50.360 And the first one is 1937.

00:48:52.200 I think then there's one of the fifties, one of the fantastic one in the seventies with

00:48:57.240 Chris Christopherson and Barbra Streisand and then of course the great, yes, the great

00:49:02.260 Lady Gaga one.

00:49:03.660 Um, so this is the first one and the, in the original script, uh, the, the male lead who

00:49:12.960 has, you know, all, all of the stars, stars, stars are born.

00:49:16.840 The male lead of course is a guy who's got a, an aging actor with a drinking problem.

00:49:20.500 Um, he kills someone in a drunk driving crash.

00:49:24.500 And what's interesting about that is that at the time in the 1930s, there was zero, uh,

00:49:32.440 visibility or concern about drunk driving.

00:49:34.720 It was an incredible social problem in the United States.

00:49:37.860 Um, courts wouldn't convict people for drunk driving.

00:49:42.660 Uh, cops wouldn't arrest you half the time.

00:49:45.520 There was just no awareness or understanding that this was a major social problem, even though

00:49:49.040 it was.

00:49:49.580 It was like an overcorrection from the prohibition era, where it was like, now it's free for

00:49:55.320 all.

00:49:56.500 It was a free, it was a free for all.

00:49:57.940 And there are these horrendous cases of people who had killed multiple, you know, who had

00:50:03.300 killed multiple people in drunk driving crashes and we're still driving their car and, you

00:50:06.600 know, at large in society.

00:50:08.080 So along comes this movie, which was a huge hit and such a powerful movie in the zeitgeist.

00:50:13.660 It's made four times and in this first version, it was going to make, it was going to have

00:50:19.400 this drunk driving crash where Hollywood would have through the use of a motion picture, um,

00:50:28.680 alerted America to the idea that drunk driving has horrific consequences potentially.

00:50:35.300 Right.

00:50:35.820 It was one of those, if they had shot the movie, the way it was originally written by

00:50:41.280 Dorothy Parker, it would have had a social impact that I argue might have woken up America

00:50:48.320 to the problem of drunk driving a generation earlier.

00:50:51.180 Um, or at least might've participated in a general movement towards an awareness of drunk

00:50:56.800 driving.

00:50:57.120 But instead of the last moment, they changed the ending and they take that out.

00:51:01.460 And instead, what you get is this kind of like saccharine ending to a star is born and

00:51:05.860 no greater social impact at all.

00:51:08.400 And what fascinates me about that is I've long been of the, and I explored this idea in other

00:51:14.700 episodes this season, long been of the opinion and many, many, many, many people smarter than

00:51:19.820 me agree with this, that television and movies play a much, much larger role in shaping, um,

00:51:29.620 our concerns, our attitudes, our behaviors than we think.

00:51:35.180 It really does.

00:51:36.940 You know, I do another episode on Will and Grace.

00:51:38.660 Did Will and Grace help win the battle for gay marriage?

00:51:41.940 And I think the answer is absolutely yes.

00:51:44.220 No question.

00:51:44.840 Uh, you know, and I think you can go, did, did dragnet in the 1950s, fundamental sixties

00:51:51.980 and fifties fundamentally shape American attitudes towards law enforcement?

00:51:57.080 Absolutely.

00:51:58.140 Did, I mean, I, I, I'm a huge believer in this notion that Hollywood is insanely powerful.

00:52:05.140 And so here was a chance where Hollywood could have made a statement.

00:52:08.700 It didn't.

00:52:09.500 And then as you later on in the episode, I talk about the fact that, uh,

00:52:14.840 that, um, uh, Mary Mitchell, who was the, uh, uh, Mary, Mary Mitchell, my, my, my, Brian.

00:52:21.440 Yeah.

00:52:21.900 I said Mary, but I meant Margaret.

00:52:23.360 Yes.

00:52:24.040 Margaret who wrote gone, gone with the wind was killed by a drunk driver, um, in 1948 or seven.

00:52:31.880 I didn't even know that.

00:52:33.480 Yeah.

00:52:34.160 And she, and to my point, she's get killed by a drunk driver and like people feel sorry for

00:52:42.680 the guy who killed her.

00:52:44.040 I mean, there's no, it's the weirdest thing.

00:52:45.800 I went back and read all the other kind of like newspaper coverage at the time.

00:52:50.420 It's like this weird kind of, Oh, that's too bad.

00:52:55.600 And, Oh, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

00:52:58.680 Or, Oh, that guy must feel bad.

00:53:01.080 It was just weird.

00:53:02.640 And you realize it was still in this era, you know, her here's, she's the most, when

00:53:08.100 she's killed by a drunk driver, she's the most famous author in America.

00:53:12.800 She is gone with the wind is like, you know, the far and away, the biggest book of that

00:53:18.420 era.

00:53:18.640 And she's in, there's no contemporary equivalent to, to the, I mean, to what, how big she was

00:53:24.900 back then.

00:53:25.520 She's killed by a drunk driver.

00:53:26.960 And everyone's like, Oh, what a shame.

00:53:29.800 And let's go on with our lives.

00:53:31.040 And my point is, if the original star is born, it kept that scene of someone dying in a drunk

00:53:41.440 driving crash, maybe we would have felt differently about the death of Margaret Mitchell.

00:53:46.000 Yeah.

00:53:46.320 If the stigma had hatched earlier.

00:53:48.580 Yeah.

00:53:49.020 Maybe.

00:53:49.380 And not to mention thousands of other people who have died, who died in the interim before

00:53:53.880 we kind of got serious about.

00:53:55.460 Wasn't it really mad, you know, mothers against drunk driving that, that successfully attached

00:53:59.880 that stigma.

00:54:00.380 I mean, I feel like I lived through that, um, back in the eighties where it was like, it's

00:54:06.220 not like people thought it was a good idea, but it was much more prevalent until mad formed

00:54:11.700 and started shaming people publicly.

00:54:13.900 And the billboards went up and then they got the States to raise the drinking age and sort

00:54:18.380 of change the laws from state to state.

00:54:20.400 If, if it was, I think that plays a really big, and also there was an awareness, you know,

00:54:26.080 I think, uh, if you go back to the forties and fifties, um, uh, this is, I'm going to

00:54:33.060 dig into breathalyzer here.

00:54:34.560 So right now, if you're, if you, if you have, um, a blood alcohol content, that's greater

00:54:39.340 than 0.08, we consider you to be legally drunk.

00:54:42.900 The standard in the forties and fifties was twice that.

00:54:47.580 So, so what would get you in there?

00:54:49.560 WI now.

00:54:50.760 Yeah.

00:54:51.280 You, you, I mean, you had to be so completely blottoed to get a DWI in the 1950s or sixties

00:54:58.280 for these fifties, sixties, but that also was a huge part of it.

00:55:02.300 It was like people realizing, wait a minute.

00:55:04.460 Like if you have four drinks or five drinks, you, oh my God, you cannot safely drive a

00:55:10.120 car, but that's, you know, it takes to get to, to blow 0.16, which was the standard back

00:55:16.220 then.

00:55:16.500 Do you know how drunk you have to be?

00:55:18.200 I mean, it's insane.

00:55:19.220 Like how drunk do you have to be?

00:55:20.560 Is that like, how many glasses of alcohol is that?

00:55:23.560 That's probably, I mean, it depends on how big you are and all those kinds of things,

00:55:27.280 but we're talking about many, many, many martinis to get there.

00:55:30.980 I mean, even getting to 0.08, you have to like, yeah, you'd have three drinks in quick

00:55:37.480 succession.

00:55:38.140 I think to get, I'm sort of, it's, you know, it's, these are, these are, yeah, but these

00:55:43.540 are, these are, um, uh, these standards are, are, you know, to, to, to hit them.

00:55:50.280 You've got to really kind of be pounding some serious stock all.

00:55:54.500 Now, when you say that Hollywood is enormously influential, do you mean, I certainly, I agree

00:55:59.400 yesteryear, do you, do you still feel that way even today?

00:56:03.960 Well, this weird thing's happened, of course, which is that, um, we've now so kind of fractured

00:56:10.420 the media landscape that one show can't have the impact that it used to.

00:56:15.260 So I mentioned Dragnet before, and it's funny in a book I'm working on, I have a whole chapter

00:56:20.720 on how Dragnet, Dragnet was a show, you know, about the LAPD where the cops were professionals

00:56:28.000 who always got their man, right?

00:56:30.800 Who solved every crime.

00:56:32.340 And when Dragnet was on the air and was popular in the 1950s, everybody in America watched it

00:56:38.960 as a famous, you know, the, it might be as high as like 30 or 40% of the people with a,

00:56:45.180 of the American households would be watching Dragnet when it was on.

00:56:48.460 You could walk down the street, Megan, someone told me this story, it's fantastic.

00:56:52.220 In the 19, in like 1955, if you walked down the street on whatever night Dragnet was on,

00:56:57.800 if you took your dog for a walk on a summer night, you could follow the show because you

00:57:02.820 would walk by your neighbor's house and they'd have the TV on and the window open and you'd

00:57:06.540 hear a bit of dialogue.

00:57:07.820 And then you'd walk to your next neighbor house and they'd have the next bit of dialogue.

00:57:10.920 You could just walk your dog around the neighborhood and you could, you know, and look in the

00:57:15.500 window and catch up on the, whatever scene was on the television.

00:57:19.080 So these shows back then were powerful because they reached everyone.

00:57:24.020 And of course not, that's not true anymore.

00:57:26.000 So it's hard for Hollywood to exert the same pull and influence that it did in the sixties

00:57:32.060 and seventies.

00:57:32.720 And even through the, uh, eighties, I mean, I did an episode on Will and Grace, like, like

00:57:38.400 I said, Will and Grace is one of the last sitcoms that really had a wide audience.

00:57:44.180 You could say, you know, in, when Will and Grace was at its peak and you were a young

00:57:49.320 adult, uh, you watched Will and Grace on Thursday nights.

00:57:52.360 I mean, you watched Friends and then you watched Will and Grace.

00:57:54.260 I mean, there was no, that was, and today there's no show, you know, you could go, I remember

00:58:00.600 going to the office and you would just start talking to anyone about what was on Will and

00:58:07.700 Grace or Friends the previous night and they would know what you're talking about.

00:58:11.240 You cannot do that today.

00:58:12.620 Even with something as popular as Game of Thrones, not everybody watched it.

00:58:16.560 Like a huge collection watched it, but not, not everybody the way it was with shows like

00:58:20.720 that in Seinfeld.

00:58:21.960 Yeah.

00:58:22.480 Growing up.

00:58:23.340 Yeah.

00:58:23.560 They, well, I thought this was interesting because I know, um, you, I know you're not a

00:58:28.480 fan of Tucker Carlson.

00:58:30.000 He's a friend and I, I like Tucker, but I thought your point was interesting because you, you're,

00:58:34.960 you felt comforted by the fact that even though Tucker's got the number one show in cable

00:58:39.020 news, he and the five split, you know, that victory week to week, um, that he's only got

00:58:44.620 about 3 million people watching him.

00:58:46.080 And I, that raised something for me.

00:58:48.500 So when I was at Fox, that's about what I had watching my show.

00:58:52.060 It would depend on the night.

00:58:53.260 And I remember saying to Roger Ailes, like, how did I become well-known with only like 3

00:59:00.040 million people, you know, why, if I walked down the street to most people seem to know

00:59:04.100 me, if I only have 3 million people watching me every night, you know, it's such a small

00:59:07.840 percentage of the American electorate.

00:59:09.840 I don't totally get it.

00:59:11.160 And he did explain it to me.

00:59:12.540 And he was saying, because it's a different 3 million every night.

00:59:16.180 And it's not the same 3 million who are watching you from nine at 9 PM as are watching you at

00:59:22.440 nine 59 people channel surf.

00:59:24.880 They see a little, so a way more than 3 million people see you in the course of that hour and

00:59:30.200 way more than 3 million people, people see you over the course of five nights, et cetera,

00:59:34.800 expanded out to the year.

00:59:36.360 So I do think, cause I know in the same way you felt comfort that Tucker has 3 million a night.

00:59:41.540 I will tell you, this is why people in cable news who have the ratings that he has.

00:59:45.720 And, you know, you could say the same of Rachel Maddow on the left.

00:59:48.180 It's not at one point, her ratings aren't there now, but that's why they have such influence

00:59:52.680 because it's way bigger than three.

00:59:54.760 And that's why they drive national conversations.

00:59:57.100 And as you know, as being a journalist, the media is lazy.

01:00:00.000 So they're kind of exciting to cover.

01:00:02.040 So you just cut a clip or write about a clip, you'll get clicks.

01:00:06.100 It'll go viral.

01:00:07.140 You know, like the, the sort of the after effect, the aftershocks help boost these personalities

01:00:12.400 as well.

01:00:13.580 I would agree with that.

01:00:14.760 But my point was, um, not so much to diminish the influence of people on, on TV today, but

01:00:22.700 compare them to the previous era of network, you know, pre cable when Roger Cronkite would

01:00:30.820 have had, I mean, half, half of Walter Cronkite would have had half of American households

01:00:37.800 watching him every night.

01:00:39.080 I mean, so it's not, it's like, you can't, we're in a different era, you know, literally

01:00:46.380 you would be, it would have been almost impossible in America in 1968 to find an adult who did

01:00:54.440 not know who Walter Cronkite was, um, who couldn't recognize him on site, who couldn't, but you

01:01:00.220 know, Tucker Carlson could walk down a lot of streets in this country and people wouldn't

01:01:04.900 necessarily know who he was.

01:01:06.460 Yeah.

01:01:06.780 Um, or any, is this a good thing with that Hollywood and media, our industries have been

01:01:12.480 dissipated somewhat in terms of the power centers?

01:01:17.140 I don't know.

01:01:17.900 It's a really interesting question.

01:01:19.620 Um, I think it hurts us and it harms it and helps us.

01:01:23.400 It hurts us in the following way.

01:01:25.620 Um, and this is an argument that I, in my episode on will and grace, I, I talk about it's a

01:01:30.520 fascinating argument, which is that if you go back to the sixties and seventies, when everyone's

01:01:36.860 watching one of three or four major networks now in those years, three major networks, and

01:01:41.480 where you do have shows that have, that are, you know, getting 30% of the American viewing

01:01:47.080 audience on a given night, what happens is what they call mainstreaming.

01:01:51.460 And what they noticed was that the best predictor of someone's political beliefs was how much TV

01:01:57.380 they watched in that era. And the more TV you watched, the more your, um, the more you tended

01:02:03.360 to move towards the center. And it was, so television had what they called a mainstreaming

01:02:07.500 effect that, and it was two parts. It was because television shows to be successful had to,

01:02:12.900 to appeal to so many Americans. If you know, out of the gate that you, to be successful,

01:02:18.240 you got to reach 50 million Americans. You're going straight down the middle, right? You're not

01:02:22.380 taking some kind of wild controversial stand. And similarly, when everyone's watching the same

01:02:28.800 thing, it's possible, easier for us to reach consensus. So I use the example of dragnet,

01:02:35.620 you know, that's a period in the fifties and sixties where most Americans had a very positive

01:02:41.820 attitude about their police department. And it's because in part, because they were watching these

01:02:48.780 shows, which portrayed, all of us were watching these shows that portrayed, uh, police departments

01:02:53.720 in a very positive light. Um, same thing with like, remember Marcus Welby, MD, you know?

01:02:59.380 Oh yeah. Now you're really going back.

01:03:02.360 The kindly family doctor. And we all, and I wasn't, but cause I'm too young, but an entire generation,

01:03:09.060 everyone watched that show. Everyone was, and it's very hard to have polarized views about family

01:03:15.480 doctors when you, when everyone's watching Marcus MD once a week. Right. Right. So that's what's,

01:03:22.000 and that's part of, I kind of think that part of the reason for the polarization, just part,

01:03:27.320 not the whole reason of American political life is that we don't have these unifying experiences in

01:03:34.160 the same way. I mean, we have football and that's, there's really very little else that we all watch

01:03:40.480 together. Mm-hmm. That's one of the things, that's one of the reasons why people objected when

01:03:45.700 football got political somewhat, you know, it was like, whatever your feelings are, we don't want

01:03:51.120 it in our sports. You know, we just, same way people got upset about the Academy Awards getting

01:03:55.900 political. It's like, could you please keep politics out of these things that used to be

01:04:00.700 untouchable when it came to politics? You know, we don't have that many things that will bind us

01:04:05.400 together that where we don't have to watch it, like with the blink, blink, blink eyes. Like I know

01:04:08.780 they're going to punch me in the face any second now on my core beliefs or something, you know,

01:04:13.360 it's, it's sad because, you know, we grew up at a time when you didn't have to worry about that.

01:04:17.480 There were certain venues you could go to and just enjoy yourself. And you didn't have to get,

01:04:21.580 you know, a lecture on how much America sucks or how bad this group is or that group, the other

01:04:27.500 something political, political message. And those days are gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are these

01:04:33.680 kinds of shared, having a kind of national conversation about, can we re, can we, can we

01:04:43.380 reimagine shared spaces again? Can we kind of, you know, there's a, you know, one of the reasons,

01:04:49.580 for example, that I think that the army and the, the, the military has remained so high in public

01:04:57.740 esteem, even as other institutions have tumbled is that, uh, the armed forces are a shared experience.

01:05:06.120 Um, you know, not a, not a perfectly shared experience, but they are a place where, um,

01:05:12.220 people from every corner of the country go and engage in a, it's not an ideological,

01:05:17.500 you know, partisan thing. It's a, on a very, very simple mission to serve the country and protect it.

01:05:24.200 I mean, it's a, that's a shared space and, uh, uh, a kind of neutral shared space. And that's why,

01:05:31.080 that's why we were, we continue to hold the military in high esteem in this country. Um,

01:05:37.500 because they've, they have been very good and very careful about occupying that kind of

01:05:42.740 common neutral ground. Um, some musicians have done the same thing, I think to create, um,

01:05:49.240 I mean, for the, I would, I would agree with you for the most part, but I would say the,

01:05:52.460 the rank and file of the military, that's true. But some of these generals have gotten pretty

01:05:56.800 outspoken Millie and what he was doing with Trump. I mean, I've had the people on the show,

01:06:02.100 military guys, famous military guys who were just appalled that he would weigh in on politics at all.

01:06:07.720 Like, just don't say anything, even though there may be within his circles,

01:06:13.640 cache and saying Trump's bad. And I called the leaders and I told him he's not insane. Like,

01:06:18.540 be quiet. You don't, you don't know what you're the earth that you are rattling right now. You're

01:06:24.480 changing. There's a seismic shift happening under your feet that you do not have the privilege or

01:06:29.580 the invitation to make, you know, that that's not what you were put there to do. I, and I personally

01:06:34.300 still have resentment toward him for doing that. It's like, just be quiet. Whatever you, whatever

01:06:37.880 you did, wherever you feel, I get it. You're entitled to it. Stop broadcasting it. Cause you speak

01:06:41.540 for an enormously important group. Yeah. Yeah. Although I think, you know, the,

01:06:48.280 the institution of the military is large enough and grounded enough and rooted enough that, you

01:06:56.020 know, we've always had generals who, uh, General MacArthur in the fifties or Curtis LeMay in the

01:07:02.440 sixties who, you know, uh, have been outspoken and kind of stepped outside of this, but you know,

01:07:09.840 that, that can't, you can't rattle an institution as large and as powerful as the military with a

01:07:16.600 couple of, have you seen the recruiting problems they're having? Yeah. I don't know. I, I, um,

01:07:22.300 I taught a class at, uh, some years back at, uh, at West point. And I have to say,

01:07:27.860 it's the most impressive group of young people I've ever met. Yeah. Extraordinary.

01:07:33.580 And then when I was doing my book, bomber mafia, I spent a lot of time with, uh, um, with some air force,

01:07:39.120 air force folks, um, pretty senior people, the air force and thought they were, uh, I just came

01:07:45.540 away in awe of that institution. I mean, just like first class people devoted to this country,

01:07:54.780 um, built a, a true meritocracy, you know, the cream rises in those institutions and they,

01:08:02.100 um, and you know, I just, I mean, I just think they're doing something right. Um, and it's going

01:08:09.920 to take a lot to shake my kind of, um, uh, my confidence in those institutions.

01:08:17.540 I wish I felt the same. I really do. Cause you know, I grew up revering them and certainly covered

01:08:22.460 so many of their stories, uh, during the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war while at Fox.

01:08:26.500 And I've just talked to so many of these guys now who are angry at, at the, the way they're

01:08:32.140 recruiting now, what they're prioritizing, what the messages have been from these top guys, not to

01:08:36.800 mention the massive losses we've taken while they've lied. They've lied about the progress in

01:08:41.880 Afghanistan. So again, I think it's a problem, not with the rank and file, uh, who we should all be

01:08:47.100 thanking day to day, but you know, something's going on with our generals and why we don't, we don't win

01:08:51.480 these wars anymore and we're misled people getting more political. It needs to stop. I don't know what

01:08:56.700 the solution is. I don't know what leader you get in, in terms of, you know, commander in chief

01:09:01.400 who could stop it, but somebody needs to, some good man or woman needs to get in there and stop it

01:09:06.680 because that you're right. That's one institution. We cannot afford to have fail or get tribal or

01:09:14.540 politically divided. So yeah, think about it this way, you know, when an institution is that large,

01:09:20.460 um, it's like a family, like imagine a big family year, you, you, you, the, the, the, you could love

01:09:29.580 the whole family while you understand that like uncle Ted's a little crazy, you know, cousin,

01:09:35.620 cousin. Uncle Ted is chairman of the joint chiefs. No, no, no, no. But the point is when a family gets

01:09:42.020 big enough, by definition, it's going to, it's going to include some people who are, you know,

01:09:47.400 a little strange or a little wacky, but you, that doesn't mean you turn your back on the family.

01:09:52.020 You, you understand that like, you know, when families, if you got, if you got like, you know,

01:09:57.300 uh, five kids and their kids and cousins and all coming over for Thanksgiving dinner,

01:10:02.920 it's going to, you know, not everything's going to go your way, but it's fine.

01:10:07.920 I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I mean, I talking to you, listening to you,

01:10:13.400 it always brings about sort of a peaceful effect on me because I think in general, I don't know if

01:10:19.780 you, if you would describe yourself as an optimist, but you have a way of being like,

01:10:22.760 it's going to work out. Let's calm down. Don't freak out. And I'm more in the business of daily

01:10:29.140 news where it's like, Oh shit, more bad news on all the fronts I care about. And I, I would also

01:10:37.440 describe myself as generally sunny. I mean, I, I don't think I'm, I'm a news person, so it's,

01:10:41.380 there's only so sunny you can be, but, but I feel like you are just more like big picture,

01:10:46.560 zooming out. We're good. Would you, is that true of you? Yeah. I mean, yes, I am an optimist,

01:10:51.920 but I'm also much, I think by, and I suspect you're the same way, but I'm most interested in

01:10:59.520 people's intentions. So my first question is always, are there, uh, are that, are someone or

01:11:06.020 that person or that institution, are their intentions good? Now I may disagree with the

01:11:13.100 direction they're going or the, with the result of their actions, but if I believe their intentions

01:11:18.200 to be pure, then I'm inclined to say, it's, we're all, we're all, it's all going to be fine.

01:11:24.920 You know, if you have a country, so to go back to our, our, um, our, to the military, for example,

01:11:30.920 I firmly believe that the intentions of the leadership of, um, all the branches of the

01:11:37.580 military are pure. They absolutely, I have no doubt whatsoever. They absolutely have the best

01:11:44.480 interests of the country at heart. Now there, they have a very difficult problem, which is they have

01:11:49.760 to make those intentions real, right? They have to, you mentioned recruiting, recruit people in a,

01:11:57.100 it's a crazy job market right now for everybody. Everyone has difficulty finding who they want to

01:12:01.780 find. Everyone has, every person of my generation has difficulty figuring out the, you know, how the

01:12:08.320 youngest generation motivates them, how they think, how they behave. It's no different for them.

01:12:12.040 They're facing the same issues that every leader in this country is facing, but are their intentions

01:12:16.960 good? And the answer is yes, they are. I mean, you don't, every one of the military leaders could

01:12:22.800 make 10 times more money if they went into the private sector and they, they chose to stay where

01:12:27.840 they are and to do what they do. And, you know, they, that makes me, that gives me enormous faith

01:12:35.700 and confidence in, um, in what, in, in, in what they do. What do you make of, I know you had a panel

01:12:41.700 that you moderated recently at MIT on transgender people in sports and in particular, transgender women

01:12:47.900 in, in women's sports. Um, just to be clear that that's somebody who was born a biological male

01:12:54.420 who then transitioned and said that they were female and then competed against females, biological

01:12:58.860 females. So this is obviously a big issue. You know, if that's a situation where, and maybe you

01:13:06.060 weren't using it this, this broad brush, but intention, I don't think intention does matter there,

01:13:11.040 right there. It's like, is the process fair or isn't it? When I read your own thoughts about your MIT

01:13:17.760 panel, I thought you had a more nuanced view on this, but your overall message was kind of like

01:13:22.780 take a deep breath, calm down. And I would say definitely I've been living more in the camp of

01:13:27.320 do not calm down, fight this. We shouldn't allow this. We should find a fair and equitable solution

01:13:33.660 for everyone, including the trans athletes, but not at the expense of girls, which is just in my

01:13:38.900 experience, Malcolm, it's always the girls who lose. And if women like me don't stand up to say,

01:13:46.320 no, stop this. They're going to continue to lose.

01:13:50.660 Yeah. Well, I guess I would say another thing. I mean, the point I made when I wrote about this

01:13:54.980 in my bulletin was there are a whole long list of very serious issues, problems, challenges,

01:14:03.340 um, facing the trans community. Um, and I don't think participation in sports is at the top of the

01:14:11.840 list in, in competitive sports is at the top of the list. I think there's, you know, if you look at

01:14:17.220 for them, for their issues and their groups, for their issues, suicide rates, social acceptance,

01:14:22.360 I mean, rates of depression and mental, I mean, all these kinds of things are hugely elevated in

01:14:27.280 this community. They have a really rough time of it. And, um, my advice to the community, I mean,

01:14:33.680 I realize it shouldn't, well, it's the wrong way to say it, but when I was thinking about this problem,

01:14:38.820 I thought, you know, that there was undue attention being focused on this question of

01:14:45.600 participation in elite sports and not enough attention being focused on much more serious

01:14:51.180 issues that affect a lot more people. The bottom line about elite sports is the number of trans

01:14:55.880 people who are competing at the elite level is really, really, really small. It's tiny. It's like,

01:15:02.560 you know, it's a handful of people. It's like Leah Thomas was at, who was a trans swimmer who

01:15:09.600 swam in the NCAAs, uh, a biological male who, uh, transitioned to, uh, and, and competed as a woman

01:15:17.300 in the NCAA swimming. It's not like there's 50 people like that. There was one, right? So the question

01:15:26.340 was, we were spending a lot of time and energy as a country arguing about one case. Now, will there be

01:15:32.020 other cases? Yes, there will. But I wanted to put it, I think the most important first thing to do is

01:15:37.160 to put it in perspective. If we're going to have an argument or a discussion as a society about

01:15:42.500 trans issues, let's talk about the fact that these kids have a really rough time of it and they're

01:15:48.360 depressed and they're, they're being bullied and they're committing suicide at rates that dwarf other

01:15:55.180 kids. Um, those are real serious, profound issues that ought to engage the empathy of all of us.

01:16:03.660 Somebody wants to compete as a woman in the NCAA swimming. I mean, I just, it doesn't belong in the

01:16:10.940 same conversation. Um, and second, who's putting like, what are you saying? Are you saying that the

01:16:16.900 trans community should stop entering those races, which makes it their issues fade away. There's other

01:16:22.940 issues fade away and the sports thing becomes number one. Are you saying the women should just

01:16:27.960 deal with Leah Thomas and be quiet because the trans community has a lot of problems?

01:16:32.540 Uh, no, I mean the former. So my concern was that in making the issue of trans participation in elite

01:16:42.480 sports front and center, um, the trans community was losing a lot of potential allies.

01:16:48.800 Uh, they were angering, um, and alienating people who would otherwise a hundred percent be on their

01:16:56.240 side. And this is a time in the life of that community where they need allies. They should

01:17:03.460 not be pushing people away by pursuing a marginal issue. Um, that, you know, if you could look back at

01:17:11.280 every, every outsider group that is trying to win the respect of a mainstream society has had to make

01:17:19.600 very hard tactical and strategic choices. So if you, I've read a lot about the civil rights community

01:17:25.000 in the sixties, they made choices like this every day, right? What are we going to fight? And what are

01:17:29.240 we not going to fight? When are we going to fight? And when are we not going to fight? Right? We can't do

01:17:33.440 it all at once and we can't, we can't get everything we want in one go. And we're going to need the

01:17:39.740 support of a wide base of Americans if we're going to succeed. And maybe that's going to take 10 or 20

01:17:45.360 years, right? That those were the calculations, people like Martin Luther King made in the 1950s.

01:17:50.620 And that's how they managed to succeed as well as they did. And I just think that kind of, um, uh,

01:17:58.520 uh, strategic and, um, and, and, and tactical consideration ought to enter into the way we think

01:18:07.100 about trans participation in, uh, elite sports as well. This is, I just don't think this is the time

01:18:12.840 to be pushing. That is a very good point. It's, uh, it's, it's been a dramatic and remarkable

01:18:19.220 turnaround in, in the way we talk about trans issues and, and trans people from just 12 years

01:18:26.080 ago to now. I mean, I remember, cause I, I have somebody who's trans in my family and, um,

01:18:33.040 well, two, two people with my husband's family in mind. And, um, I remember being on the air,

01:18:40.540 like trying to get people to be a little kinder in the way that they were talking about trans people,

01:18:44.880 like Chaz Bono came out. That was one person. And just trying to like slow people down and say,

01:18:49.600 no, this really is a thing. There are some people who know, but from the time they're two

01:18:53.280 and so on. And I think people were coming along in terms of being accepting and being kinder and

01:18:59.000 being, you know, just more generous and understanding. And then it went like overnight

01:19:03.200 to, they're going to be in the, in the locker room with your teenage daughter and they're going

01:19:08.020 to be in the same bathroom and they're going to be on the same sports team. And they're going to,

01:19:10.840 and if you better shut the hell up about it, if you have a problem and you better use the proper

01:19:14.260 pronouns, or you could actually in places like Canada, as you know, be arrested. It was like,

01:19:18.520 whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That just makes everyone retreat and say, I'm out.

01:19:25.460 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I don't think, I don't think we'll look back on this and,

01:19:30.440 and say that, uh, uh, yeah, this is the way that, the way this thing has been,

01:19:37.700 this whole issue has been handled on, on, on all sides has not been exemplary over the last, um,

01:19:43.760 uh, over the last. And it's like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm in it. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's

01:19:49.780 fair. All right. I'm going to pause it here because Malcolm got in trouble because he thinks

01:19:53.700 it's a good idea for some people to go to the office sometimes. Another one of his radical ideas.

01:19:59.560 Um, and we'll talk to him about why he believes that and the, the response to him saying that.

01:20:04.880 You stepped in it in a way. I'm sure you never thought you're going to be stepping in it by

01:20:11.960 saying, as I understand it, Malcolm, uh, you went on the podcast with Stephen Bartlett, who's who

01:20:16.620 hosts diary of a CEO. It's not in the best interests for collaborative or creative workers

01:20:21.960 to work from home and suggested that being physically present in the office allows for

01:20:27.620 workers to obtain a sense of belonging and diminished. Oh, and, and, and said, it's,

01:20:32.860 it's really not a good idea to just sit in your pajamas all day to work. So the stay at home

01:20:37.840 crowd lost its mind and took offense. And I'll just give you one example, cause this is kind of a fun

01:20:44.060 one. Someone online named The adorable writes, I have never felt part of something or a sense of

01:20:50.160 belonging working in a corporate office, working from home and getting distance from that toxic

01:20:54.660 environment is a blessing. Malcolm Gladwell can go fuck himself, especially because he also works from

01:21:02.460 home. And then he goes on with another, not nice word. So that was kind of funny. Ben, Ben there.

01:21:07.620 So what, what was your point and what did you make of the backlash?

01:21:11.160 Well, it was this weird thing. First of all, I don't work from home. Um, but at the height of the,

01:21:17.440 this whole thing was a hilarious, uh, example of our, uh, uh, of our contemporary social media

01:21:25.200 at the height of this, the daily mail, when I, we have an office, uh, Pushkin, um, upstate and

01:21:32.980 where we, about eight of us or so work. And when we moved in, I tweeted a picture of my office,

01:21:39.580 right? The daily mail found that picture that I had tweeted in my office and said, this is a picture

01:21:45.120 of Malcolm's home office that he works from. He works from home. It's like, no, it's not where I

01:21:53.680 go every day. So I think a lot of the, um, uh, reaction was people who mistakenly thought that I

01:22:03.780 was, um, that I was, you know, not practicing what I preach. I, um, there was a time in my life 20 years

01:22:11.340 ago when I didn't go into an office, but that was because I didn't have an office. I was a freelance

01:22:15.460 writer. Um, and you know, so there was nowhere to go if, even if I wanted to, I really like offices.

01:22:22.160 I didn't, I don't have, you know, the other thing that happened was this weird thing was I went on

01:22:26.820 this podcast and the host of the podcast has very strong feelings about, he was the guy talking about

01:22:32.500 it. And I was like, yeah, you know, for, and I was just talking about my experiences that when we're

01:22:37.160 doing creative collaborative stuff, it's a lot easier when we're all together. That's really my

01:22:43.300 point. Um, and it, which doesn't mean that everyone has to go into the office every day.

01:22:47.620 I mean, there's a lot of work that you do when you're doing solitary when I'm writing, which I do

01:22:53.460 some portion of the time. So does it matter where I am? Not particularly if you're doing some people

01:22:58.200 on our team, there's a whole chunk of the work that's solitary. They could, should be free to do it

01:23:04.020 wherever they want. But when we have, when we're doing stuff, we're working together. It's just

01:23:09.260 easier and more fun when we are physically together. That was my point. I, I don't think

01:23:14.800 there's anything controversial about that. Um, there isn't a lot of people. And there are some

01:23:20.340 people who have jobs where there legitimately isn't much collaboration. Right. And I, those people,

01:23:28.520 and they've been going into offices for no reason and are resentful about it rightly. And I'm, I think

01:23:34.720 it's working from home for those kinds of people. Totally. Like, why would you spend two hours a day

01:23:39.880 commuting if there's no function, no purpose to being in an office with people, but, um,

01:23:45.200 but there usually is some purpose. I mean, that's the thing people have stayed at home because of the

01:23:50.000 pandemic and now they don't want to go back. And I think they, they lash out and anyone who suggests

01:23:55.720 they must or should, or it would be in the best interest of themselves, their town, et cetera.

01:24:02.440 And you got swept up in that for some ridiculous reason. I will say this, it's having a real effect.

01:24:07.720 People staying at home, people not going back to the office, New York city mayor, Eric Adams

01:24:12.480 and San Francisco mayor, London breed, urging workers and sectors of tech and finance to please

01:24:18.120 return to the office saying it. We need it to help the small businesses that rely

01:24:23.900 on all the office foot traffic latest stat. Um, New York's office occupancy right now,

01:24:30.940 36% have returned 36. That's too low. In San Francisco, two thirds of the city's workforce

01:24:39.400 has returned. San Fran officials said a remote work cost it 400 million in tax revenues last year.

01:24:45.580 I could see it in New York as business after business closed up without wall street being there,

01:24:51.900 without the law firms being there, without a lot of the media being there, you know, lunch,

01:24:57.200 but you can't go out to lunch in New York anymore. It's like half the places in the city are gone.

01:25:01.840 Even institutions, the 21 club and the Panera bread, you know, like just drying up, going away,

01:25:08.440 never to return. Yeah, they may. I mean, Megan, I think there's, there is an important point here.

01:25:15.200 And that is that, um, a lot of employers, not a lot there, there are employers who took their

01:25:20.720 employees for granted and who had workplaces that weren't functional, that were toxic, that weren't

01:25:28.960 collaborative place, uh, fun places to go and asking someone to go on a lengthy commute to,

01:25:37.200 to join in a, an experience that's not meaningful is ludicrous. You can't. And so there's an,

01:25:44.640 there's a, I think that there's a possibility here of a real valuable wake up call, um, which is

01:25:52.780 that this is a, a kind of, um, uh, an opportunity for a lot of employers to kind of fix what was

01:26:01.140 wrong. And, and if they can fix what was wrong, people will happily, I think not every, not, like I

01:26:06.940 said, not everyone has to come back, but some people, if they can find value in coming back, will

01:26:11.860 come back. Um, so I think the best way to say this is to kind of frame, this is not to blame,

01:26:18.160 um, employees for not, you know, following demands, but to ask employers to rethink the way they,

01:26:26.020 uh, structure their workplace environments.

01:26:28.720 Hmm. I mean, I will say I work from home now. I have a studio in my home. And when I launched this

01:26:35.140 show, I hired all employees who could work from their homes. You know, it was virtually all of them

01:26:40.180 can do most of the work from their homes other than when we're live in the air and they might

01:26:43.840 have to move during those two hours. And I like being able to offer that to my staff. I mean, I,

01:26:48.520 I think it's a perk of this job where I'm not watching you and I don't, I just trust you to get

01:26:53.100 your work done. Um, but I do believe in the time honored tradition of office buildings and people

01:26:59.420 coming together. And, you know, I miss, I would love to have a work environment where my entire team

01:27:04.860 was with me. Unfortunately, I hired people who work in Canada and they work in Dallas. They work

01:27:09.320 all over the country. So it's like, it's not going to happen unless I want to fire everybody. And

01:27:12.720 don't worry team. I don't. Um, but I think we are losing something if we shift to this sort of remote

01:27:18.400 work is the default and the office is only important if you must be seen. I don't know. I think

01:27:24.940 we're already so isolated as a society. The iPhone's torn us apart. The bowling leagues are gone.

01:27:31.460 And now we're going to get rid of in office time together. I don't, I don't think this is going

01:27:36.660 to have a good effect. Yeah. Well, I mean, certainly I read the most interesting thing I

01:27:42.080 read about this was an observation by the guy who runs Gallup and Gallup has been doing polls on

01:27:48.660 people's, um, basically happiness, satisfaction with their life for, you know, decades. And what

01:27:56.200 they've noticed over the last 15 years or so is that it used to look, if you could have asked people

01:28:02.140 to rank their quality of life, zero to 10, 10 is great. Zero is bad. It used to look like a bell

01:28:08.400 curve, right? Most of us were in the middle, five, six, seven, some people on the fringes. Um, and what

01:28:15.720 they've noticed now is that the number of people who say 10 out of 10 has doubled. And the number of

01:28:21.960 people who say zero out of 10 has tripled. So there's no, it's not a bell curve anymore. Now

01:28:28.720 there's a portion of people are really, really happy with the way their lives are going. And a

01:28:32.800 portion of people are very unhappy. And that's what we should be concerned about. We should be asking

01:28:40.440 who are the happy people? What are they doing? That's working for them. And how can we, how can we

01:28:46.100 help them continue to do what's working for them? And, but way more importantly, who are the unhappy

01:28:50.900 people, these people who are at zero and what do they need from us? And it, you know, if it's the

01:28:56.320 case that we can move people who are zero might, maybe they would be happier in a social environment

01:29:02.200 of an office if that office was socially was kind of a meaningful place to work. I don't know,

01:29:07.400 but I think that the right question is to sort of talk to those two groups and figure out what's going

01:29:13.720 on. Because you can't have a functional society, um, where a huge proportion of your workforce

01:29:21.580 says, calls themselves, says, says that there's zero out of 10 on, on, on life satisfaction. I mean,

01:29:27.940 that's crazy, right? That's, that's completely non-sustainable.

01:29:32.260 Hmm. I wonder, I wonder if it's real, you know, there is sort of some, there's a trend socially,

01:29:38.640 especially for the younger set to sort of lean into everything's miserable and I suffer from all

01:29:44.160 these afflictions and somebody needs to solve it. You know, like, I don't know the stiff upper lip

01:29:49.500 approach of your, the country of your birth, we've kind of lost touch with that here in America. So I,

01:29:56.860 I do wonder what, what's in that zero out of 10 attitude. Yeah. But I mean, it's hard to believe

01:30:03.780 that nothing's going on, right? I mean, it's such a striking change. I admit, yeah, there may be

01:30:11.040 different kind of, uh, uh, contemporary ideas about how you represent your emotional state

01:30:17.560 that are feeding into this. But in the other hand, you know, we have lots of other data that says

01:30:22.280 about rising levels of, of psychological distress and unhappiness and loneliness and all those kinds

01:30:28.260 of things. So I think something real is going on. And, um, I would like, like I said, before we kind

01:30:35.540 of make these kinds of strict policies about where, where we should or shouldn't be working or how

01:30:41.500 are we should or shouldn't be working, I'd like to investigate the unhappiness more and just ask the

01:30:48.540 question, well, how can I make you happy? How can I make people like that happier? And then, and

01:30:54.880 look from that observation. I think that's the right way to go. Do you think, do you think on a

01:30:59.200 wider scale, it is possible for someone to become happier? Like, do you think we have a base level

01:31:04.560 of happiness that can be adjusted meaningfully up or down? Yeah, I think, totally do think that. I

01:31:12.260 think there are, there are, let me give you two examples. Um, if I took your, you take someone,

01:31:19.920 I, you know, I I'm Canadian and I'm very aware there's a highway that runs across, um, the bottom

01:31:25.520 of, of, uh, of Ontario called the 401. If you commute, if you live outside Toronto, which many

01:31:32.700 people have to do because Toronto is incredibly expensive and you have to work in Toronto, you

01:31:35.800 commute on the 401, it's hell. You could spend an hour and a half in the morning and an hour and a half

01:31:40.960 at night, or you don't even know, it could be two hours, one day, it could be three hours, one day.

01:31:44.460 And if we were to create a work life for somebody where they no longer had that hellish commute,

01:31:50.620 that would make them happier. Absolutely. Three more, three more hours with their family, uh, you

01:31:56.480 know, another hour exercise. I mean, you can just list all the reasons that would, there are things

01:32:00.980 where somebody who has anxiety about their health insurance, that's keeping them up at night. If you

01:32:07.160 can resolve that anxiety, can you make them happier? Yes, you can. I mean, you can't solve deeper

01:32:12.880 existential questions about, you know, those are things people have to work out with their loved

01:32:19.280 ones and their, you know, pastor or whoever, their therapist, which you can solve as a society. We can

01:32:26.340 solve these kinds of, of, uh, nuts and bolts questions about how people's lives are organized

01:32:32.220 and asking, you know, you know, this, the, the, the unaffordability of housing forced many people to live

01:32:40.720 miles and miles and miles from their jobs. And that made them unhappy. It totally did. I mean,

01:32:46.620 that's why they didn't, many didn't want to come back to work. And I, you know, don't blame them one

01:32:52.020 iota. Money issues are a stress that is tough to, I mean, like there's, there's only one solution to

01:32:58.160 those and to, it's to somehow solve them. Like that is a sickness in the pit of your stomach that you must

01:33:03.920 address in order to get rid of that stress. Um, but on the commute and other things, you know, I,

01:33:08.500 I remember my old pal, Dr. Phil saying your life is the way it is because you set it up that way.

01:33:14.560 And we all, we do have choices and you know, it's like you can get another job. You can find

01:33:18.820 another place to live. I've done it. I did the terrible commute from Baltimore into DC for a

01:33:23.580 year of my life and don't recommend it. Um, but yeah, you're empowered. You're empowered. And if

01:33:28.200 your employer won't give you what you want, you're empowered to find another job. There's never been a

01:33:31.720 better time. Malcolm, it's such a pleasure. Good luck with your beautiful daughter. Enjoy

01:33:36.420 Upstate. And, uh, I hope we talk again. Me too. Thanks. All the best. Want to tell you,

01:33:42.980 we have another fascinating thinker joining us on Monday. Russell Brand will be on the show for

01:33:48.360 the first time. That's exciting. I interviewed him one time at NBC and then halfway through the

01:33:52.180 interview, he goes, I don't know why people say the things they say about you. You're quite enjoyable.

01:33:56.320 So naturally I wanted to meet him again. We'll be speaking live in person at Sirius XM

01:34:03.080 headquarters on Monday. In the meantime, download the show, youtube.com and check out megankelly.com

01:34:08.120 to hear from me personally tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS,

01:34:14.700 no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 15, 2022

Malcolm Gladwell on Gender Identity in Kids, Becoming a Dad, and Working From Home ｜ Ep. 392

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