Pushkin.

Folks, Risk is the podcast where people tell true stories they never thought they

dare to share in public.

And all throughout February, for Black History Month, we have jaw-dropping true stories.

They'll make you laugh and cry, an amazing array of people of all walks of life,

sharing about their experiences of being black in America today.

Look for risk on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Christmas is one week away.

And how am I celebrating?

With restraint and circumspection.

In the Gladwell family, we do a mid-century modern Christmas, spare, elegant, minimalist.

Lots of the baby Jesus in a tasteful Scandinavian leather and rosewood manger. No Santa, no reindeer, no elves. Not so for my

colleague, Ben Nadav Haff-Hafri. The glabbles impose a dollar limit on gifts, like price controls

in some socialist state.

The Dadaf Hafries spend months thinking of what to get one another.

The glabbles buy a tree at the last moment and would be happier if he could just move the whole operation outside around the Douglas Pine in the backyard.

Ben's family has a tree, a little model village covered in snow,

and his father's vintage electric train set, plus a little metal tree with ornaments that's up

year-round. So when I told Ben that I had never watched, It's a Wonderful Life, he was stunned.

Then he reached out to me, as the Good Samaritan did to the

traveler lying bereft by the side of the road, how could this be? He asked me gently. Because,

as you can imagine, for the Nadav Hafrey's, It's a Wonderful Life is a sacred text. Then Ben told me

...