Showing posts with label malcolm gladwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label malcolm gladwell. Show all posts

Friday, 5 June 2020

Malcolm Gladwell - "Talking to Strangers" (as audiobook)

Interesting enough about spies and, unfortunately, inbred racism. Levine - "Duped" - we trust people by default. Only when there are triggers, we start to doubt. Supposedly, we need "enough" triggers or red flags to not believe someone. Saying in hindsight "how did you not pick up on that [red flag]?" is the wrong question. The question is: how many red flags were there?



Finished.  Enjoyable listen, but he often seems to love his own theory too much. There are lots of interesting issues and stories here, but he loves the simplicity of people "just not" knowing how to talk to strangers. Ignoring inbred racism, lust, evil.

Sunday, 30 June 2019

Malcolm Gladwell - Revisionist history podcast series 2 episode 6 - King of Tears

Malcolm Gladwell

"Beauty and authenticity can create a mood, they set the state. But I think the thing that pushes us over the top into tears is details. We can cry when melancholy collides with specificity."


When you remove the duplicate parts of a rock 'n roll song, it shrinks by 60%. Lots of generic phrases because everybody comes from a different background and the cliches are necessary for those different people to talk to each other. So lots of duplicates. If you would go deeper or get too specific, you start to loose people.

Country and hiphop shrank at most by 40%. Tightly knit musical communities. If you speak to people who understand you world, your language, your culture, you can be a lot more specific.


Various versions of "He Stopped Loving Her Today", most notably George Jones, who had just been recovering after heavy drug and alcohol usage because his wife had left him.