Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 150 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is journalist Malcolm Gladwell.

Best-selling author of such books is Blink, The Tipping Point, and Outliers.

And we'll be speaking with him today about what geeks and nerds can learn from his most

recent book, David and Goliath, misfits, underdogs, and the art of battling giants. And now here's our

interview with Malcolm Gladwell.

All right, so we're here with Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Glad to be on it.

Okay, and so your latest book is called David and Goliatholiath and it's out now in paperback.

So just tell us a bit about the book.

It's a book about Underdogs and the nature of Advantage.

And I sort of try to figure out when are advantages advantageous and when are they not?

You know, when is a little adversity a good thing?

And also I'm interested in any kind of asymmetrical conflict.

When a big guy takes on a little guy,

how does that change the nature of the conflict? What are the strategies available to the little guy?

It's all those kinds of questions which lead in all sorts of unexpected directions.

Yeah, yeah, and so as the title suggests, you start off the book by talking about the biblical story of David

and Goliath, and you have a different take on that story than most people.

You want to tell us about that?

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