Tyler Cowen: preference

Transcript context

…Most of my questions will be quite short, but my first question will be really, really long. Since everyone knows you and your work so well, I asked myself, “Who is Malcolm Gladwell?” And I tried to come up with an answer. I’ll give you my answer, and then you can correct me or add to that, and this will take a little while. So, I think of you as a figure set, really, coming out of the postwar Caribbean Enlightenment. I put you in a context with, say, Sylvia Wynter, C. L. R. James, Frantz Fanon. A common theme in their work is the notion that science is something potentially liberating and emancipatory. You’re picking up on that, with one of the channels of influence being your mother, who is herself a very well-known Caribbean writer and intellectual. So there’s that Caribbean background: power of science to liberate human individuals. There’s, then, on you a Mennonite influence both from your childhood and your family, where you grew up in Canada. My understanding of Mennonites is, they tend to stress the notion that in the Scriptures, there’s not much talk of original sin, so you see the possibility for goodness in people. You then spent much of your life in Canada, so there’s a modesty that comes from that temperament, and also intellectual modesty. You then have a father who is a mathematician, so there’s the emphasis on data. And you got your 10,000 hours of practice, mostly at the Washington Post, as an early person behind the rise of data-based journalism. Key themes in your work: I think of them as contingency, optimism, and voluntarism; power of the individual. Your first book, Tipping Point, is about how small moves can lead to big changes. Your last book, David and Goliath, is about how David can beat Goliath in many contexts. So again, contingency, optimism, voluntarism, the individual, and whether it boils down to: Is there a better way to shoot NBA free throws or could Elvis Costello have improved on his recording of Goodbye Cruel World? There’s this consistently optimistic perspective, so you’re really a very systematic thinker with core themes running throughout your whole work. That’s my take on who’s Malcolm Gladwell. How do you see it? Who is Malcolm Gladwell? [laughter] Well, that’s a very flattering interpretation. I don’t know if I think that deeply about myself. [laughter] The only thing I would add to that is, I really liked to tell stories, and my desire to tell stories is not a product of my background. It’s a reaction against my background because my family, with all due respect to them — I love them dearly — are not good storytellers.…

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