Malcolm Gladwell | |
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.jpg) Gladwell atSXSW 2025 | |
| Born | Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (1963-09-03)3 September 1963 (age 62) Fareham, England |
| Education | University of Toronto (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | Non-fiction writer, journalist, public speaker |
| Years active | 1987–present |
| Notable work |
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| Website | www |
Malcolm Timothy GladwellCM (born 3 September 1963) is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker.[1] He has been astaff writer forThe New Yorker since 1996. He has published eight books. He is also the host of the podcastRevisionist History and co-founder of the podcast companyPushkin Industries.
Gladwell's writings often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences, such associology andpsychology, and make frequent and extended use of academic work. Gladwell was appointed to theOrder of Canada in 2011.[2]
Gladwell was born inFareham, Hampshire, in England. His mother Joyce (née Nation) Gladwell, is aJamaicanpsychotherapist. His father, Graham Gladwell, was a mathematics professor fromKent, England.[3][4][5] When he was six his family moved fromSouthampton to the Mennonite community ofElmira, Ontario, Canada.[3] He has two brothers.[6] Throughout his childhood, Malcolm lived in ruralOntarioMennonite country, where he attended a Mennonite church.[7][8] Research done by historianHenry Louis Gates Jr. revealed that one of Gladwell's maternal ancestors was a Jamaicanfree woman of colour (mixed black and white) who was a slaveowner.[9] His great-great-great-grandmother was ofIgbo ethnicity from Nigeria. In the epilogue of his 2008 bookOutliers he describes many lucky circumstances that came to his family over the course of several generations, contributing to his path towards success.[10] Gladwell has said that his mother is his role model as a writer.[11]
Gladwell's father noted that Malcolm was an unusually single-minded and ambitious boy.[12] When Malcolm was 11, his father, a professor of mathematics and engineering at theUniversity of Waterloo,[13] allowed his son to wander around the offices at his university, which developed Malcolm's interest in reading and libraries.[14] In the spring of 1982, Gladwell interned with theNational Journalism Center inWashington, D.C.[15] He graduated with a bachelor's degree in history fromTrinity College at theUniversity of Toronto in 1984.[16]
Gladwell decided to pursue advertising as a career after college.[14][17] After being rejected by every advertising agency he applied to, he accepted a journalism position at conservative magazineThe American Spectator and moved toIndiana.[18] He subsequently wrote forInsight on the News, a conservative magazine owned bySun Myung Moon'sUnification Church.[19] In 1987, Gladwell began covering business and science forThe Washington Post, where he worked until 1996.[20] In a personal elucidation of the 10,000-hour rule he popularized inOutliers, Gladwell notes, "I was a basket case at the beginning, and I felt like an expert at the end. It took 10 years—exactly that long."[14]
When Gladwell started atThe New Yorker in 1996, he wanted to "mine current academic research for insights, theories, direction, or inspiration".[12] His first assignment was to write a piece about fashion. Instead of writing about high-class fashion, Gladwell opted to write a piece about a man who manufactured T-shirts, saying: "[I]t was much more interesting to write a piece about someone who made a T-shirt for $8 than it was to write about a dress that costs $100,000. I mean, you or I could make a dress for $100,000, but to make a T-shirt for $8—that's much tougher."[12]
Gladwell gained popularity with twoNew Yorker articles, both written in 1996: "The Tipping Point" and "The Coolhunt".[21][22] These two pieces would become the basis for Gladwell's first book,The Tipping Point, for which he received a $1 million advance.[17][22] He continues to write forThe New Yorker. Gladwell also was a contributing editor forGrantland, a sports journalism website founded by formerESPN columnistBill Simmons.
With the release ofRevenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering in 2024, Gladwell has had eight books published.
When asked for the process behind his writing, he said: "I have two parallel things I'm interested in. One is, I'm interested in collecting interesting stories, and the other is I'm interested in collecting interesting research. What I'm looking for is cases where they overlap".[23]
The initial inspiration for his first book,The Tipping Point, which was published in 2000, came from the sudden drop of crime inNew York City. He wanted the book to have a broader appeal than just crime, however, and sought to explain similar phenomena through the lens ofepidemiology. While Gladwell was a reporter forThe Washington Post, he covered theAIDS epidemic. He began to take note of "how strange epidemics were", saying epidemiologists have a "strikingly different way of looking at the world". The term "tipping point" comes from the moment in an epidemic when the virus reachescritical mass and begins to spread at a much higher rate.[24]
Gladwell's theories of crime were heavily influenced by the "broken windows theory" of policing, and Gladwell is credited for packaging and popularizing the theory in a way that was implementable in New York City. Gladwell's theoretical implementation bears a striking resemblance to the "stop-and-frisk" policies of the NYPD.[25] However, in the decade and a half since its publication,The Tipping Point and Gladwell have both come under fire for the tenuous link between "broken windows" and New York City's drop in violent crime. During a 2013 interview withBBC journalistJon Ronson forThe Culture Show, Gladwell admitted that he was "too in love with the broken-windows notion". He went on to say that he was "so enamored by the metaphorical simplicity of that idea that I overstated its importance".[26]
The Sunday Times described the book as one of the 12 most influential books sinceWorld War II.[27]
AfterThe Tipping Point, Gladwell publishedBlink in 2005. The book attempts to explain how the humanunconscious interprets events or cues as well as how past experiences can lead people to make informed decisions very rapidly. Gladwell uses examples like theGetty kouros and psychologistJohn Gottman's research on the likelihood ofdivorce inmarried couples. Gladwell's hair was the inspiration forBlink. He stated that once he allowed his hair to get longer, he started to get speeding tickets all the time, an oddity considering that he had never gotten one before and that he started getting pulled out of airport security lines for special attention.[28] In a particular incident, he was apprehended by three police officers while walking in downtown Manhattan because his curly hair matched the profile of a rapist, despite the fact the suspect looked nothing like him otherwise.[28]
Gladwell'sThe Tipping Point (2000) andBlink (2005) were international bestsellers.The Tipping Point sold more than two million copies in the United States.Blink sold equally well.[17][29] As of November 2008, the two books had sold a combined 4.5 million copies.[14]
Gladwell's third book,Outliers, published in 2008, examines how a person's environment, in conjunction with personal drive and motivation, affects his or her possibility and opportunity for success. Gladwell's original question revolved around lawyers: "We take it for granted that there's this guy in New York who's the corporate lawyer, right? I just was curious: Why is it all the same guy?", referring to the fact that "a surprising number of the most powerful and successful corporate lawyers in New York City have almost the exact same biography".[30][14] In another example given in the book, Gladwell noticed that people ascribeBill Gates's success to being "really smart" or "really ambitious". He noted that he knew a lot of people who are really smart and really ambitious, but not worth $60 billion. "It struck me that our understanding of success was really crude—and there was an opportunity to dig down and come up with a better set of explanations."
Gladwell's fourth book,What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, was published in 2009.What the Dog Saw bundles together Gladwell's favourites of his articles fromThe New Yorker since he joined the magazine as a staff writer in 1996.[18] The stories share a common theme, namely that Gladwell tries to show us the world through the eyes of others, even if that other happens to be a dog.[31][32]
Gladwell's fifth book,David and Goliath, was released in October 2013, and examines the struggle of underdogs versus favourites. The book is partially inspired by an article Gladwell wrote forThe New Yorker in 2009 titled "How David Beats Goliath".[33][34] The book was a bestseller but received mixed reviews.[35][36][37][38]
Gladwell's sixth book,Talking to Strangers, was released September 2019. The book examines interactions with strangers, covers examples that include the deceptions ofBernie Madoff, the trial ofAmanda Knox, the suicide ofSylvia Plath, theJerry Sandusky pedophilia case atPenn State, and the death ofSandra Bland.[39][40][41] Gladwell explained what inspired him to write the book as being "struck by how many high profile cases in the news were about the same thing—strangers misunderstanding each other."[42] It challenges the assumptions we are programmed to make when encountering strangers, and the potentially dangerous consequences of misreading people we do not know.[43]
Gladwell's seventh book,The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, was released in April 2021.[44]
Gladwell's eighth book,Revenge of the Tipping Point was released in October 2024. The book is a sequel commemorating the 25 year history of best selling first book,The Tipping Point, which was released in 2000. The book discusses social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis.[45] While a bestseller, it received mixed reviews.[46]
The Tipping Point was named as one of the best books of the decade byThe A.V. Club,The Guardian, andThe Times.[47][48][49] It was alsoBarnes & Noble's fifth-best-selling non-fiction book of the decade.[50]Blink was named toFast Company's list of the best business books of 2005.[51] It was also number 5 on Amazon customers' favourite books of 2005, named toThe Christian Science Monitor's best non-fiction books of 2005, and in the top 50 of Amazon customers' favourite books of the decade.[52][53][54]Outliers was a number 1New York Times bestseller for 11 straight weeks and wasTime's number 10 non-fiction book of 2008 as well as named to theSan Francisco Chronicle's list of the 50 best non-fiction books of 2008.[55][56][57]
Fortune describedThe Tipping Point as "a fascinating book that makes you see the world in a different way".[58][59] TheDaily Telegraph called it "a wonderfully offbeat study of that little-understood phenomenon, the social epidemic".[60]
ReviewingBlink,The Baltimore Sun dubbed Gladwell "the most original American journalist since the young Tom Wolfe."[61]Farhad Manjoo atSalon described the book as "a real pleasure. As in the best of Gladwell's work,Blink brims with surprising insights about our world and ourselves."[62]The Economist calledOutliers "a compelling read with an important message".[63]David Leonhardt wrote inThe New York Times Book Review: "In the vast world of nonfiction writing, Malcolm Gladwell is as close to a singular talent as exists today" andOutliers "leaves you mulling over its inventive theories for days afterward".[64] Ian Sample wrote inThe Guardian: "Brought together, the pieces form a dazzling record of Gladwell's art. There is depth to his research and clarity in his arguments, but it is the breadth of subjects he applies himself to that is truly impressive."[18][65]
Gladwell's critics have described him as prone to oversimplification.The New Republic called the final chapter ofOutliers, "impervious to all forms of critical thinking" and said Gladwell believes "a perfect anecdote proves a fatuous rule".[66] Gladwell has also been criticized for his emphasis onanecdotal evidence over research to support his conclusions.[67] Maureen Tkacik andSteven Pinker have challenged the integrity of Gladwell's approach.[68][69] Even while praising Gladwell's writing style and content, Pinker summed up Gladwell as "a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning", while accusing him of "cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies" in his bookOutliers. Referencing a Gladwell reporting mistake in which Gladwell refers to "eigenvalue" as "Igon Value", Pinker criticizes his lack of expertise: "I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer's education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong."[69] A writer inThe Independent accused Gladwell of posing "obvious" insights.[70] The British websiteThe Register has accused Gladwell of making arguments by weak analogy and commented Gladwell has an "aversion for fact", adding: "Gladwell has made a career out of handing simple, vacuous truths to people and dressing them up with flowery language and an impressionistic take on the scientific method."[71] In that regard,The New Republic has called him "America's Best-Paid Fairy-Tale Writer".[72] His approach was satirized by the online site "The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator".[73]
In 2005, Gladwell commanded a $45,000 speaking fee.[74] In 2008, he was making "about 30 speeches a year—most for tens of thousands of dollars, some for free", according to a profile inNew York magazine.[75] In 2011, he gave three talks to groups of small businessmen as part of a three-city speaking tour put on byBank of America. The program was titled "Bank of America Small Business Speaker Series: A Conversation with Malcolm Gladwell".[76] Paul Starobin, writing in theColumbia Journalism Review, said the engagement's "entire point seemed to be to forge a public link between a tarnished brand (the bank), and a winning one (a journalist often described in profiles as the epitome of cool)".[77] An article by Melissa Bell ofThe Washington Post posed the question: "Malcolm Gladwell: Bank of America's new spokesman?"[78]Mother Jones editorClara Jeffery said Gladwell's job for Bank of America had "terrible ethical optics". However, Gladwell says he was unaware that Bank of America was "bragging about his speaking engagements" until theAtlantic Wire emailed him. Gladwell explained:
I did a talk about innovation for a group of entrepreneurs in Los Angeles a while back, sponsored by Bank of America. They liked the talk, and asked me to give the same talk at two more small business events—in Dallas and yesterday in D.C. That's the extent of it. No different from any other speaking gig. I haven't been asked to do anything else and imagine that's it.[79]
In 2012,CBS's60 Minutes attributed the trend of American parents "redshirting" their five-year-olds (postponing entrance into kindergarten to give them an advantage) to a section in Gladwell'sOutliers.[80]
Sociology professor Shayne Lee referencedOutliers in a CNN editorial commemoratingMartin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Lee discussed the strategic timing of King's ascent from a "Gladwellian perspective".[81] Gladwell gives credit toRichard Nisbett andLee Ross for inventing the Gladwellian genre.[82]
Gladwell has provided blurbs for "scores of book covers", leadingThe New York Times to ask, "Is it possible that Mr. Gladwell has been spreading the love a bit too thinly?" Gladwell, who said he did not know how many blurbs he had written, acknowledged, "The more blurbs you give, the lower the value of the blurb. It's thetragedy of the commons."[83]
Gladwell is host of the podcastRevisionist History, initially produced throughPanoply Media and now through Gladwell's own podcast company. It began in 2016 and has aired seven 10-episode seasons. Each episode begins with an inquiry about a person, event, or idea, and proceeds to question the received wisdom about the subject. Gladwell was recruited to create a podcast byJacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief ofThe Slate Group, which also includes the podcast network Panoply Media. In September 2018, Gladwell announced he was co-founding a podcast company, later namedPushkin Industries,[84] with Weisberg.[85] About this decision, Gladwell told theLos Angeles Times: "There is a certain kind of whimsy and emotionality that can only be captured on audio."[86]
He also has a music podcast withBruce Headlam andRick Rubin, titledBroken Record where they interview musicians.[87] It has two seasons, 2018–2019 and 2020 with a total of 49 episodes.[88]
The Unusual Suspects with Kenya Barris and Malcom Gladwell, premiered January 30, 2025. The podcast features candid interviews with influential figures across a spectrum of disciplines. A common thread throughout these interviews are discussions about each subject's path to success. Interview subjects have ranged from trailblazing Fortune 500 CEOUrsula Burns to hip hop recording artist and producerDr. Dre.[89]
Gladwell is a Christian.[90] His family attendedAbove Bar Church in Southampton, U.K., and later Gale Presbyterian in Elmira when they moved to Canada. His parents and siblings are part of theMennonite community in Southwestern Ontario.[8] Gladwell wandered away from his Christian roots when he moved to New York, only to rediscover his faith during the writing ofDavid and Goliath and his encounter with Wilma Derksen regarding the death of her child.[91]
Gladwell was a national class runner and an Ontario High School (Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations – OFSAA) champion.[92] He was among Canada's fastest teenagers at1500 metres, running 4:14 at the age of 13 and 4:05 when aged 14. At university, Gladwell ran 1500 metres in 3:55. In 2014, at the age of 51, he ran a 4:54 at theFifth Avenue Mile.[93][94] At 57 he ran a 5:15 mile.[95]
His first child, a daughter, was born in 2022.[96] In 2024 it was reported that "In a span of five years, he got engaged, had two children, turned 61, and moved from Manhattan to the small town ofHudson, New York."[97]
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In 2005,Time named Gladwell one of its 100 most influential people.[98]
In 2007, he received theAmerican Sociological Association's first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues.[99] The same year, he received an honorary degree from the University of Waterloo.
In 2011, he was named a Member of theOrder of Canada, the fifth highesthonour for merit in the system oforders, decorations, and medals of Canada.[2]
He has received honorary degrees from theUniversity of Waterloo (2007)[100][101] and theUniversity of Toronto (2011).[102]
His is a recipient of the 2024 Audio Vanguard Award presented by On Air Fest.[103]
| Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | "The Bill". The Critics. Books.The New Yorker.90 (43):65–70. 12 January 2015. | Brill, Steven.America's Bitter Pill. Random House. |
| 2015 | "Mirror stage: a memoir of working undercover for the Drug Enforcement Administration". The Critics. Books.The New Yorker.91 (13):93–96. 18 May 2015. | Follis, Edward & Douglas Century (2014).The Dark Art: My Undercover Life in Global Narco-terrorism. New York: Gotham Books. |
Gladwell was a featured storyteller forthe Moth podcast. He told a story about a well-intentioned wedding toast for a young man and his friends that went wrong.[108]Gladwell was featured in General Motors "EVerybody in." campaign.[109]
Gladwell is the only guest to have been featured as a headliner at everyOZY Fest festival[110]—an annual music and ideas festival produced byOZY Media—other than OZY co-founder and CEOCarlos Watson. Gladwell has also appeared on several television shows for OZY Media, including theCarlos Watson Show (YouTube)[111] andThird Rail With OZY (PBS).[112]
Gladwell has a chapter giving advice inTim Ferriss's bookTools of Titans.
Gladwell was voiced byColton Dunn inSolar Opposites S3.E1The Extremity Triangulator.[113]
In just the first seven episodes of their new podcast The Unusual Suspects, Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell have welcomed a broad range of guests from a Fortune 500 CEO to an Olympic gold medalist to a renowned chef.
On Air Fest proudly announces the recipient of the 2024 Audio Vanguard Award is Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is a journalist, speaker, New York Times bestselling author, hit podcast host and the Co-Founder of Pushkin Industries.
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