Malcolm Gladwell Doesn't Mind Being Wrong | From Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know

29:00Yeah. As a grifting charlatan. Yeah. And I think the adjustment that I've made is you have to lead with, I don't know. That's what I do. I make it very clear on our little microphones here. Just in case if anyone is using micro content as a way or vessel to truth, I just want to make it very clear that the title of the show is Hassan Manhasch doesn't know. Don't get me started on what happened to you, which I'm still angry about. No, don't. Nothing is more tiresome than people who fact check stories. These are not like, you weren't writing a history of your life that was going to be published by Harvard University Press.

29:37I was condensing many stories into 70 minutes. You're a performer. For goodness sake, do we forget what a performer is? Like part of what's funny about comedians, like the universe of good comedians, is that when we are listening to you, the thing that draws us to you is the idea that you guys have a distorted lens. That's what we don't have. We don't have a distorted lens. We don't see the comic possibilities in looking at the world from a slightly different angle. And the delight we get from listening is, oh, that person's not looking at something straight on. They have this completely, you know, this surprising wacko, never would have thought about it in a million euros perspective.

30:26That's the punchline. That's what a punchline is. Sure. Right. So like to sit to, to fact check a story like that is to essentially undermine the very basis of what we want in a, in a comedian. And if you're getting your history from a, from a, from a comics routine, then you're so intellectually impoverished. I have no time for you. Malcolm, don't do this. I put out a 23-minute YouTube video about this. You can see it in the link below, but it's fine. It's okay. We don't have to believe it. It drives me crazy. Malcolm, it's okay. I'm a race-baiting, drifting charlatan. It's okay. Meanwhile. And then you can make funny jokes about it, and then you can sell out about it.

31:00The people for whom this stuff does matter get a pass. Okay. Right? The politicians who are telling bullshit stories, they're not comedians. Right. I didn't vote for you to look at the world from a 45-degree angle. It's okay. hey, Malcolm, you can put me in comedy jail. It's fine. I accept my sentence. Get worked up about this. I do not want my comics to be like dryly relating to facts of the day. Okay, understood. You want your comics spicy. You want your comics lying to you. And that's okay. You know, I got to give it to you though. Again, you and I, we love a hot take. Literally, you have Revenge of the Tipping Point.

31:39And then CBS Sunday Morning does a story on you. And you've got even more spicy takes. Let's take a look. You should never go to the best institution you get into. If you want to get a science and math degree, don't go to Harvard. This is nutso. Well, no, that's part of a complicated argument from my book, David and Goliath, which just says you should never, if you're interested in succeeding in an educational institution, you never want to be in the bottom half of your class. It's too hard. So you should go to Harvard if you think you can be in the top. quarter of your class at Harvard. That's fine.

32:16But don't go there. If you're going to be the bottom of your class, no. Doing STEM, you're just going to drop out. I get it. Now you're triggering me because I was pre-med and I was in the bottom third of my class. They did the whole thing. Look to your right, look to your left. Two of you won't make it. You were one of those. I was one of the two. Yeah. And we don't have to get into this because now you're triggering me. But let me just say, Malcolm, if you do get into Harvard, you got to go to Harvard. You have to. No, you don't. if my daughters, knock on wood, get into Harvard, and I don't think they're going to be in the top third of their class, I'm going to say don't go.

32:46It's too hard. It's crazy hard. Do you know how smart those kids are? I know people who went to like elite public high schools, like, you know, Stuyvesant in New York. Yeah. And everyone in Stuyvesant basically has an IQ of 180. So the dumbest person in a math class in Stuyvesant can have an IQ of 100 and whatever. 70. So they think they're dumb because you measure your, that's how you measure your intelligence by looking around the room. They're not dumb. They're in the top 99.999 % of humanity, but they are misled by the fact that they happen to be in the most extraordinarily selective group of individuals in the city of New York.

33:26Don't do that to yourself, right? Or you should, because I'll tell you why. Both Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz went to Harvard and then Donald Trump went to Penn. So my point is, is that there are idiots that go to these institutions and if they can spin it into a win, so can you. If you get into Harvard, go. Take your shot at going to the league. If you get drafted, if David Stern gives you the call, I went to UC Davis, unfortunately. And the crazy part is, is I got into UCLA, but I didn't go. I went to Davis instead. This is a longer story for another time. I got scared. Your family's from Sacramento, were they?

34:02Sacramento. Davis. I grew up in Davis and I went to UC Davis. You didn't want to go to UCLA? Now I met my wife there. UCLA is like - I met my wife there. And so it was the biggest blessing of all. And it was wonderful, but yeah. UCLA is like summer camp. It's like - Malcolm, I get it. What were you doing? I know, I know. I got shook. I got shook. That is madness. That I didn't go to UCLA. Yeah. I know, I know. It is a regret. Were you like an ag major? Like what were you - I was a pre-med major. And I ran into somebody when I did my campus visit that said, hey, STEM at UCLA is really hard. You shouldn't go here.

34:37Oh, I see that's what you were thinking. And that's what got me to not go. Now, look, again, I met the love of my life, the mother of my children at UC Davis. Let's take that reality to the side. Everything else, UCLA, the Wooden Center, the history, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And you're in the middle of LA. And Westwood. You're in the middle of LA. I should have gone. And so Malcolm, if you get a call from Adam Silver that says we're calling you up to be one of the 400 players to play in the league, You got to go to the league. And if you can't cut it, fine, but you got to go to the L. Let's look at another one of your crazy spicy takes that I don't know how you thought this was cool.

35:11Let's take a look. It's not in your best interest to work at home. I know it's a hassle to come to the office, but like, you know, if you work, if you're just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live? Is that the work life I want? Answer, yes. I forgot I got so much trouble for that. I'll never live that one down. I can't believe you dredged that one up. It's one of the top videos of you, Malcolm. What am I wearing? I'm wearing like some T-shirt. You're wearing a gray T-shirt. So the irony here is that you're telling people to not be bums, be in their pajamas and work at home, and you're wearing a goddamn Hanes tee here.

35:46Here's what I should have said. I should have said two things. No, one thing. It depends who you are. If you're 25 and you're entering a new field and trying to master it, you shouldn't be at home. You got to go to the office because you got to learn from other people. And it's way, way, way, way easier to learn from other people when you can see them face to face. If you're 50 and you got three kids at home and you got an hour and a half commute and you're really good at your job and experienced, why are you coming in? Doesn't make any sense. You can be way more productive at home. Depends who you are.

36:24What I was reacting to, I think, in that was this widespread belief that everybody is better off just working from home. I don't think that's true. I do think if I had worked from home in my 20s, I would not be here. You would never have heard of Malcolm Glaube. Here's my subway take. I'm Kareem now. I 100 % disagree. I'm not here to tell anybody how they should live their life. I used to work at OfficeMax for many years. I'm not trying to brag, but I wasn't a great employee and I truly did not care because my first name isn't Office and my last name isn't Max. Whatever you can to do you, protect your own, get the bag, and take care of your family, do your thing.

37:01Yeah. No, yours is a much more evolved position than mine. But I do, I was simply trying to explain, if you've never, if you're young and you're trying to, like I said, master something complicated, it can be hard to understand how much richer the learning experience is when it's in a social setting. Right? That's all. If you're trying to be a journalist, so when I started out in journalism, I got a job at the age of 23 at the Washington Post. And I was within 10 feet of four or five of the greatest journalists of my generation. And I didn't know anything about journalism. And I - Who were you around?

37:42I mean, man. I mean, among others, Bob Woodward was, greatest investigative reporter of the 20th century, was as far away from me as you are. There was just a series, there was a guy named Steve Call, who was like a legend. There was a guy next to me called Mike Isikoff, who is another legend. And I spent like six months, my first six months, almost doing nothing, but sitting there just eavesdropping. And like, it was a masterclass. All these things that I had no idea how to ask a question, how to get, how to interview someone who didn't want to be interviewed, how to frame idea, how to, I mean, I could go on and on and on, how to process things on the fly, how to write.

38:24I just watched them. You picked up a ton of game from these people. in person. And no, by the way, no athlete would ever say you can master a sport by yourself. Ever. They would never say, oh, I got drafted by the Knicks and here's what I'm going to do when I work from home over the off season. No. They would never say that. Like, no. If LeBron wants to spend the off season by himself, absolutely, he's at the top of this game. But if you're a rookie, if you're 19 and you just got drafted out of wherever, Kansas State. No, you show up with your peers and learn from them. That's all I was saying.

39:05I do not think that is a controversial take. And I was speaking from my own personal experience because I had become aware, acutely aware in later life, just how much I learned in those early years in journalism. You know, Malcolm, you were able to pick up game from some legends at some great institutions. but a lot of people who have jobs, their coworkers are a bunch of bums. And so they just want to say, peace out, Carl. I'm going home. I don't know. You're more of a cynic than me on this. I actually think that if you're motivated, you can always find in any setting somebody from whom you can learn.

39:48And that's another thing that is useful about going in your early years in going to the office. And immersing yourself. Is making those kinds of social calls, right? There's 10 people around here. Who's the one that matters and that I should be attaching myself and learning from? That's a really, really important skill that you can't learn by yourself. We've had an amazing conversation, but we haven't even gotten to, I think one of your best pieces of work. I'm talking about the podcast Revisionist History. Yeah. Season 11, ladies and gentlemen. Season 11 of Revisionist History is about the Alabama murders.

40:26Now that's the title of it, but give me the details of what launched this story about this particular situation in Alabama. A friend of mine named Steven, I was talking to him about a year and a half ago and he goes, I have a friend named Kate who has the most interesting job in America. You should talk to her. I was like, okay. And I did this thing, which I've started to do more and more and more, where I find someone interesting and I just sit down with them for as many hours as they can tolerate and just talk to them with no agenda. So Kate was someone, Kate Porterfield, was this really extraordinary woman whose job it was, she's a trauma expert.

41:10And she started out by treating people who've been, started working at the torture clinic at Bellevue, treating people who've been tortured around the world. It was a world-renowned torture clinic there. Then she went on and she spent a lot of time in Guantanamo Bay, working with people who've been tortured by the CIA. And then she got involved in criminal cases, capital cases, where she was brought in by, usually by the defense in a death penalty case to try and understand the life and the trauma of the convicted killer, right? And so incredibly interesting. So I sat down with her. we met five times each time for about three hours.

41:54And in the fourth time, fourth visit, fourth session, she started talking about a case she had just finished working on, about a guy named Kenny Smith. And I was just floored. I was like, oh my God, that's what I want. So in hour like 20, I was like, oh, that's what I want to talk about. Yes. Kenny Smith was a guy from Florence, Alabama, in the northwestern corner of the state, who had been convicted in 1988 of murdering the wife of a preacher. And it was a murder for hire. And had been sentenced to death in the state of Alabama. And had been living on death row for 40 odd years. And she got involved in that case, just as Kenny was about to be executed.

42:48And so I just said, oh, I wonder why I tell that story. And it is the most, I think it's the best thing I've ever done. It was the most emotionally powerful thing I've ever done. We ended up doing seven episodes. We ended up expanding it. So Kate, who plays a central role in the story, doesn't even appear until episode five or six. Isn't it, it was two men that were - Two men. Yeah. Another guy as well. So the whole premise of this thing is so interesting. It almost sounds like a prestige show for FX, which is there's a wife, there's a husband, there's a murder for hire. The men assault and beat said wife, but then the husband kills the wife.

43:30We think. We think. Yeah. And then it's specifically about the two men that were part of this murder for hire that are then given the death sentence. and what's really fascinating about it is you think this is almost like true crime, but it's actually an analysis about how crazy Alabama judges are. Why are they so crazy? Well, why is Alabama crazy? I mean, Alabama is the weirdest state in the union. I think that's beyond dispute. Also one of the most fascinating, I mean, I say that, I actually love Alabama. I go there, I've done so many stories there. I go there all the time. I find it absolutely riveting place.

44:11The great curse of the United States is, of course, the legacy of slavery, which has persisted. That curse has lingered longer in some parts of the country than others. And Alabama is a place that is still kind of struggling under the weight of that legacy. Now, this case involves everyone's white in this case. So it's not explicitly about the relationship between black and white people. But what we're describing is a brutal and unfeeling system of punishment that arises in response to the kind of racial realities of the state. So we have this, what we're documenting in this series is the unrelenting, tireless, relentless desire on the part of the state of Alabama to find a way to murder these two guys, to execute these two convicted murderers.

45:17What's so interesting about it is this is an analysis on capital punishment. Yeah. So the jury is actually against the death sentence. The judge is for it. But just for our audience, before they dive into the season, can you give me the history of capital punishment in America? What's the history of capital punishment in the United States? Yeah, so it's... Compared to our Western European peers, America was very slow to kind of dial back capital punishment. It's a pretty big deal in this country up through the 70s. And then the Supreme Court says, we've looked at the way capital punishment is being used in the States, and we think it clearly shows signs of racial bias and arbitrariness.

46:08You know, you get two people convicted of the same crime. One's getting executed, one's not. You can't do that. You got to have some kind of rigor. They put a pause on it, on death penalty. Public support for the death penalty plummets, and people think it's going away, and then it comes roaring back. Not everywhere, but particularly in the South. And one of the states in which it comes roaring back is Alabama. And Alabama does this thing to ensure that they will, to retain their right to execute whoever they choose, they give the judges what is called override. So there's only one other state in the union that does anything remotely like this.

46:50But in the state of Alabama, if you are convicted of a crime and the jury votes for life without parole and not the death penalty, if the judge wants, it's not been changed, but for many years, if the judge wanted to, the judge could override the jury and just say, I know you wanted life without parole, but I think this person should be killed. and which is like a really, really weird thing where they basically throw out. A judge basically gets to have a super veto on a jury, which is nuts. Nuts, nuts. But I have two questions, follow-up questions. The first is, is that up until the 70s, they were like, no, we cannot kill people.

47:27We are against the death penalty. What was it about the Supreme Court that lifted that ban? So everyone's doing it. The Supreme Court says, stop. And then the Supreme Court comes back a couple of years later and says, you can proceed so long as you ensure, they're speaking to the states, that there's some rigor to the process. You gotta have standards. You have to say, you know. And what are their standards here? They're like, look, you can't, the guillotine's gotta go. We can't have a firing squad. Some states, by the way, have the firing squad, right? There's a big, I didn't get into it, but I interviewed all these people about, you know, one of the standards is the method of punishment must be neither cruel nor unusual.

48:04and so you get into these big definitional things is, is lethal injection, for example, cruel? And there's a big argument that it is because you suffer actually. You think you're not suffering. Lethal injection you are. Then the electric chair was clearly cruel. You did suffer. So there's a big argument. One of the reasons that Utah brings back the firing squad is that it's an argument that it's more humane than lethal injection. Actually, if I had to be executed, I would choose the firing squad over lethal injection. It's that bad, lethal injection? Yeah, we talk about that in one of the episodes.

48:40So take me through the mechanics of lethal injection. How does it work? It's three drugs. It was dreamt up by this doctor in Oklahoma in the 70s on the back of an envelope. It's never been subjected to any kind of scientific protocol or medical analysis. It's a random dude in response to a request from the Oklahoma State Legislature which wanted to start putting prisoners down the same way they put down horses. And so the guy says, okay, here's what you should do. Give them a sedative, like a barbiturate, then hit them with a paralytic that basically kind of freezes you. And then hit them with potassium chloride, which will stop their heart.

49:25I think basically his position is, that should work. And everyone's like, okay, let's do that. And Reagan, funny enough, was a big proponent of lethal injection. Reagan was a big proponent of it. And so lethal injection, which spreads throughout America and then throughout the world. So in many countries now that have euthanasia, legalized euthanasia, they're using the lethal injection protocol. Well, we have a whole episode of the podcast where this really brilliant anesthesiologist from Atlanta named Joel Zivett does all these autopsies of people who've been executed. He finds that their lungs are filled with blood, frothy blood, and realizes what's happening is that the barbiturate that they get at the very beginning is given in such a high dose that it's turned their blood acidic and it's burning up their lungs.

50:16So what happens is your lungs are on fire, which is, as you can imagine, quite painful. Because you've been given a paralytic, you can't cry out in pain. I mean, the way you describe it in the podcast is horrifying. This is the pull quote. The last thing that you may know is that you're on fire from the inside and the blood is filling up your lungs as you die. It's nasty. The whole point of this is no one who's involved in the death penalty game is even remotely interested in trying to prove that this is a quote unquote humane method of... They don't... When Joel Zivett did the analysis of autopsies to figure out what was going on with lethal injection.

50:54Lethal injection had been used in American prisons for close to 50 years. So for half a century, we've been doing this, and no one bothered in 50 years to ask the question of how exactly lethal injection was doing its work. That's the level of kind of moral callousness that we're talking about. It just felt like it was common knowledge. When Reagan was like, look, they use it on horses, but now horses are people, so it'll be the same. yeah and we we go into this in some detail and it's the most horrifying part of what is a very long and horrifying story it's just like nobody gives a shit well there's an interesting philosophical discussion to be had here with i call them the revenge heads the petty police there's two camps there's one camp that's like there has to be a more humane way to have justice and to understand that you cannot just kill human beings then there are people that are like Like, pfft, good.

51:50Yeah. Good. There's a lot of that. No, but for real? Yeah. Good. Yeah. There is that strong, which I don't understand. How do you react to that sentiment?

52:06It seems peculiarly American. It seems peculiarly medieval. It's part of this weird thing about this country, which is that we are simultaneously the most sophisticated country in the world and also the least. The larger point about this is that if you compare the U.S. to, say, Western Europe or parts of South Asia, East Asia, that we're very interested in the severity of punishment, and they're interested in the certainty of punishment. So if you think about deterrence, about the attempt to dissuade someone from committing a crime, the certainty of punishment, how likely are you to get caught?

52:53The severity of punishment, how much you'll suffer if once we catch you. And the celerity of punishment, how quickly it happens. In Europe, they're super focused on certainty. If you murder someone in Europe, it's almost 100 % certain you will get arrested or someone will get arrested for that homicide. Certainty is super high, but they go really easy on severity. Prison sentences are fractions long. Most people don't go to prison. We do the opposite. We have very low certainty. The chances of getting arrested for a homicide in this country are less than 50%. In certain neighborhoods in this country, they're below.

53:34On the south side Chicago, it's like 15%. But if you get caught, you will throw away the key, right? So this is part of that same dynamic. We've decided we're going to put all of our eggs in the severity basket and make, we want to make punishment as horrifying as it sounds to try and dissuade you from committing a crime. The Europeans say, don't put your emphasis there, put your emphasis on certainty. I happen to believe the European approach is far superior. Why do you think in America there's this obsession, particularly with the severity and the feeling of, hey, look, if you kill these bad people, we're talking about criminals, we're talking about murderers.

54:16If you kill them, now you just have good people left. Yeah. That was kind of the conversation I had. I had with different friends and people at the office before you came in. Hey, how do you feel about this? And there was, again, a camp of people that were like, this is barbaric. All of this is barbaric. The green mile, electric chair is barbaric. Firing squad is barbaric. Lethal injection. This is nuts. It's all crazy. I'm not with this. And then there's people that are like, yeah, it'd be like that sometimes. This is a total digression, but my brother was a principal in an elementary school.

54:46And he would always, his great struggle was ensuring the quality of his teachers, right? Because it's a big difference. And he would always say, you cannot fire your way to a better school. meaning that like you think your first thought is oh i'll just get rid of my bad teachers and hire good ones and he's like it doesn't work that way you can't you you if you're if you're just getting rid of the bad ones and and quote unquote hiring good ones you're not solving the problem that made the bad teacher bad right you have to look at yourself and say am i developing people properly am i supporting them properly am i putting them in the right place those are the questions you got to start with.

55:27You can't just like go in there and willy nilly get rid of people. And I think there's a version of that with, that's what's not happening in people who are obsessed with killing off murderers. They're not asking the harder question, which is, well, it doesn't help. You're just going to, if you don't solve the underlying conditions that create this, you're just going to get another crop taking their place. You have obviously a high level of empathy and curiosity. And one of the ways that you showed that is the way you end season 11. There's this really powerful moment where you speak to the therapist of the man who was sentenced to death and you do something that is extremely rare in podcasting.

56:05You literally are quiet and choked up and silent for a minute. Now, remember, this is a medium where you have to keep yapping, but you are so emotionally moved that you cannot even speak. Why did you choose to end the podcast in this moment?

56:26Because we'd been on this, I'm gonna get emotional about it all over again.

56:34Doing that show was the single most, there are a very small number of events that I've been a part of in my life, experiences that have shaken me emotionally. death of my father number one by far I'll never get over that

56:57birth of my children in a positive sense doing that show was like up there shook me shook me and still does it was incredibly hard to write to report to like the number of times I found myself after conducting an interview where I couldn't function for the next like. And it seemed the most honest thing to do at the end of the show to communicate the fact that this tore me apart, right? Like, because what I wanted to do was, the whole idea was it was a show about people who looked at these two kids from this little town in northern Alabama who do something insanely stupid when they're 19 years old and were written off by the state of Alabama and by the rest of society.

57:58And a series of people come and see in them some element of humanity. Go to the trouble of investing in these kids kids who society has thought were worthless and finding something of value in them and learning how to love them. Right. And I mean, in one case, this guy we talked about in, I think, episode three, this lawyer visited this guy in prison, drove two hours each way once a month for 20 years to visit this kid in prison, one of the murderers in prison, just to spend time with him. and that like just tore me apart, right? I just, it just, and I needed at the end of that, of the show to kind of, just to tell people that like, it's okay to like,

59:01it's okay to, to...

59:16It... It's okay to feel...

59:29It is okay to open your heart to someone whose society to someone whose society has given up on.

59:54Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it, man. It's a very powerful moment. and something to think about um and it's a very what i thought was so amazing about it is a very real thing that there are people these two men obviously did something wrong but for you to explore the complexity of despite the fact that people make mistakes and do things that are horrible we're still human beings and we're so much more than what the state was thinking where they would literally kill people from the inside as if they were animals yeah and so I just thought that was a really powerful moment and thank you for sharing how those interviews moved you yeah do you hope that it makes us as a society more empathetic or it makes perhaps America reflect on our own internal empathy.

1:00:54That's always the hope with these things. It's very difficult to measure the impact, but I think all you can do is just join the chorus of people who are insisting that we be more human.

1:01:14I got to somehow end on a positive note. We got to button this thing. How do we do I don't know. How do we do this? I did bring this down a notch. My ability to kind of like inject a downer note to any room I - No, I appreciate it. I walk into it. It was a rare podcast moment. Yeah. And I think an amazing counterweight to the never ending blabbering that we have through lav mics. Yeah. It was just a really human, beautiful moment. Yeah, thank you. And so, like I said, everyone please listen to season 11 of Revisionist History. last thing and i don't know if you you got your pep and your step to do this but you are very famous for giving people blurbs on the back of their book oh yeah now first things first what is a blurb because it sounds like a slur that you hear in harry potter you bloody blurb to what is two sentence three sentence endorsement goes on the back of a book which says i read it i liked it you should read it too.

1:02:15Do you mind giving a blurb for this interview here? Right to your camera? Oh my God. You're the master of blurb. I've seen your blurbs on many different books that I have to lose. Yeah. Hassan got me to cry. I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't expecting that to happen. Anyone who can make their guests cry deserves a shout out. I would listen to Hassan doesn't know on a regular basis from now on. How are you? Prepare to be dazzled. Prepare to be dazzled. Can you also add a parenthesis that I didn't bully you into crying? Hurry right away, no delay, stop listening. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now's the perfect time.

1:02:58Because guess what? You can listen completely ad-free. Plus, you'll unlock exclusive bonus content, like Halle Berry on how to be a good partner during menopause, or Mehdi Hassan on the dumbing down of media, clips you won't hear anywhere else. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to LemonadaPremium.com to subscribe on any other app. That's LemonadaPremium.com. Don't miss out. You know that feeling when you reach the end of a really good true crime series? You want to know more. More about the people involved, where the case is now, and what it's like behind the scenes. I get that.

1:03:38I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and on my podcast Crime Story, I speak with the leading storytellers of true crime to dig deeper into the cases we all just can't stop thinking about. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.