Michael. Peter. Have you ever read a book by Malcolm Gladwell?

Uh, I have read one of his essay collections, if that counts.

It does count, because that is what his books are.

I'm going into this with complicated feelings, because I actually think that some of his early

work is pretty good. I'm also very aware of the difference between the fact checking

standards at the New Yorker, which are legendarily high, and the fact checking standards at

major book publishers, which are non-existent.

That's great analysis for someone who has never read a Malcolm Gladwell book.

I'm trying to predict what you're getting me into with this.

Well, you know, I went into this thinking Gladwell was just sort of a bog standard pop science

hack.

I left it thinking that he is possibly an actual psychopath who doesn't believe in anything

other than his own need for fame and approval.

Now that you've spent 10,000 hours reading his work, I'm not going to talk about that.

So he's a journalist. He gets, he goes to the New Yorker in his early 30s. I think he's,

it's 1996, and he's just jugging along at the New Yorker until the year 2000 when he

publishes the tipping point.

Right. So in the tipping point, he posits a theory of how ideas spread across society. It says

that they spread similarly to epidemics.

His primary idea is something he calls the law of the few, which claims that a small number

of people are responsible for the promulgation of ideas across society.

Oh, this is his thing where he makes up a capital letter name.

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