Welcome to the podcast This Is Who Killed Teresa, and I'm your host John
Alore. For a number of weeks, I've been moonlighting over on a neighbor
podcast called gov Love. Now. Gov Love is a podcast that has to
do with issues and interests related to local government, and most recently, I
completed an interview with the journalist Malcolm Gladwell. Malcol is known for a number
of books, but more recently, he himself has launched a podcast called Revisionist
History. For this week's episode, I'm going to play that interview with Malcolm
Gladwell. And some of you may wonder what an interview with Melton Cloudwell has
to do with a podcast about unsolved murders. Maybe frame it this way.
In the interview we discuss largely issues of social justice, so maybe consider the
relationship between criminal and social justice. Malcolm and I attended Trinity College the University
of Toronto together, and perhaps infamously, we are connected by an episode of
the Moth he did in I believe two thousand and nine called Her Way,
in which he discussed how he and a group of his friends destroyed a wedding.
And preparing this interview, I had a number of colleagues review some drafts
of it to offer any suggestions they might have for improvement, and overwhelmingly the
common thing that came back was why did you never discuss the wedding with Malcolm?
And at the end of the playing of the interview, I will submit
a PostScript and offer of my thoughts for why that was never discussed. I
think when you hear the whole story, I'd probably come to see that it
was justifiable reason. Malcolm Gladwell, welcome, Thank you. So I wanted
to ask you, you know about revisionist history. Nowadays everyone has a podcast,
and then and then you decided to have a podcast, and I mean
I was clearly I was struck by it. You pack a ton of information
into it. It's very emotionally charged, which I like initially. What did
you set out to do with this podcast? Why did you feel you needed
to do it? And are you happy with the outcome? I? Well,
I have a friend in the podcast business, my old friend Jacob runs
Panoply, which is one of the big podcast publishers, and so he just
said to me, you should do a podcast. And I was procrastinating about
my next book, and so I said sure, and then I had no
idea what I wanted to do, and I I just kind of started in
the middle and I had a few stray ideas around of things I thought would
be interesting, and then, uh, it just kind of mushroomed. I
thought it was going to take me. I thought it was going to be
a month's work, and it was I had to be six months work.
So I was completely deluded on all levels about what I was getting into.
UM. But here we are, you know, just finishing season two,
and I realized, I'm now it's a kind of a it's basically a full
time job. I mean it's half half a year I have to devote to
this. UM. So it's turned from I think I did entered in very
casually into something that I'm really into. Yeah, I gotta say it's it's
really great to hear your voice on the you know, there was sort of
an l for people who know you that was missing, you know, from
the writing, and then to hear your voice, it just adds a whole
new dynamic to it. So you you already have one season under your belt
of revisionist history. I believe ten episodes, and I think the season your
season two is premiering this week. Yeah, new season launches, so we
can only do ten. I can only do ten episodes a year. I
can't. I mean coming up with the ideas is full time job. So
yeah, So the new season airs h January June fifteenth, this Thursday,
and then every Thursday for the next ten weeks. Fantastic. So, in
thinking of how you you, you said you sort of came into this in
the middle of it. If I remember the timing right, um, I
think in the summer twenty fifteen is when you went on your your Twitter rant
about the John Paulson the Harvard one hundred two million dollar donation, and then
I think in December of twenty fifteen, Hank Rowland I died. Did those
two things factor into you wanting to do this? Those two events? No,
I had no idea, No, neither of those facts have anything had
anything to do with me wanting to I completely independently decided to do a podcast.
Never intended to do anything about endown once at all, But then I
did that. I was going to do just one show on education. It
was just going to be that about that kid Carlos. I did a show
on and then I did that and I realized that was a show in and
of itself. This seems to happen a lot with these podcasts as I come
in with an idea and I realized that the idea is much bigger than I
can do in forty minutes. And so then I did a second show,
which was The Vast serversus Bowden Show, and then and then I was I
was going to do the stuff about endowmas an now one, and then I
realized, oh no, no, there's still too much material. It was
only then that I decided to do. Then. I hadn't known hand Grown
had died. I just remembered reading somewhere about his years ago, about his
about his donation to Pasporths Day College. So then you know, there's the
whole thing is incredibly there's no logic at all. It's just completely serendipitous.
But the new season a big chunk of the last episode I did, which
will be episode six, which is we're recording this week. I was home
in Canada and my sister in law told me a story. It's like really,
and I just took my paper quota out and I recorded her on the
spot. And then the story involved this guy and his wife who lived down
the street, and so I called him up and I said, will you
come over? And my you know, and my niece babysitted their kids while
this guy and his wife talked to me. I mean, it's literally on
that left. Sometimes it's on that level of spontaneous. Well, yeah,
I wondered. I wondered that. I mean, you're you're obviously beyond the
level where say you're at the New Yorker and somebody assigns you to the story,
and I wonder how much of that is is you you, as you
say, just serendipitously learning of an event, say like in the Mennonite episode,
and just pulling out the tape recorder, as opposed to, um,
you know, somebody you're assigning you something. I imagine there's not a lot
of that. Although you get ideas, imagine from a lot they filter through
a lot of places. There's no there's no assignment. Sadly, I wish
there was. All of the ideas are are are mine? Um, I'm
desperate for to find other ways of generating ideas, because it's coming up with
ten good story ideas for a podcast is really hard. Um, But no,
they're all they're every single one of them has the same very serendipitous UM
kind of origin when I have now I have some in the bank, but
they're not really problem is that you know that, you know, you consider
twenty and you choose ten, But you can't just do the ten remaining the
next season because you rejected them for a reason, right right, your ideas
move on. You're not You're not there anymore, and they're not Some of
them are not any good. But I had what I wanted to do about
UM. I wanted to defend Ryan Williams for his memory problems, and I
just I can't. I just can't do it in a way that makes me
happy. I mean, are you The desire to defend him is very strong,
but the way in which you I would defend him is it just doesn't
strike me as being interesting enough. I can't. I mean, until I
figure out how to do that story, I can't do it. You know,
it's sort of not just just having a notion that you're interested is not
sufficient. It's like, is there an interesting way to do it? And
I just can't figure out what that is. I wanted to I wanted to
spend a little time on the Education Trilogy, because I think it's essential listening.
Certainly. You know, I have young daughters who who are starting the
college, you know, experience, and I've insisted that they listen to it.
Starting with Carlos doesn't remember. You make the point that the point of
privilege being advised you as second chances, and I wondered if you could talk
a little bit about how that's particularly true in the United States, the idea
that you only get one shot, as opposed to, for instance, where
we grew up educated in Canada. Yeah. I don't it's very m it's
weird. I don't really get it. I don't stand the primacy of college
in American mythology. I mean, it's just four years, and for those
four years, people go nuts. They spend three years trying to get into
the four year institution, and then they go into debt for the next thirty
years to pay for the four years, or pay for the four years,
and then they pretend that something happens in those four years that's magical and could
only happen at the institution they chose, or at least the institution that was
number one on their list. The whole thing is bananas. I mean,
just make ay there's nothing. I mean, I had this same rule when
I hire assistance, I won't. I don't let them tell me the names
of any of the institutions they attended. And I tell them, if you
let slip where you went to school, you're not getting the job. It's
just my little protest against this ludicrous system. I honestly could care less where
when you went to college. Who cares? I care what they can do
for me, you know, or what they're like now, I don't know.
It's sort of the system is there's a number of particular American talent or
taking good ideas and destroying them with a kind of an over application of zeal.
You know, the healthcare system in America is too good. It's just
ridiculous. I mean, it's like it's so goal plated and you know,
to the point where nothing matters anymore. You know. The there's nothing wrong
with playing tackle football. There's a problem with playing tackle football from the age
of six, right, Like, it's fine if you play it. In
fact, the medical data backs this up. Your risk of of long term
brain trauma if you start playing in college is very small. It's just a
time thing. The damage you do is the damage you do when you start
playing at six, So why play at six? Who needs to play it
at six? Like it's just the same, Like it's this this kind of,
like I said, this over zealousness that you know, a good college
is a good thing, but that does not mean that the very best college
is the very best thing. Um that it's that I'm always reminded of that
that one wonderful legal axiom the perfect is the enemy of the good, that
to me sums up American society. It's just like that, this relentless search
for the very very best thing, as if it makes a difference. It's
interesting because I mean, obviously they're they're broad themes of social justice I find
in in all of your work, but particularly in revisionist history. But I
always kind of think, is that what you're kind of doing in the in
the podcast, are you trying to balance the scales a little bit about who
wins and who who loses? I mean, you talk a little bit about
yourself being a lone voice. You feel that way. Well, it's funny
now that I have season two in the bag. Season two does I hadn't
thought explicitly about that theme the season two does in more than half of the
shows. Half of the shows at least pick up on that. I'm obsessed
in season two with power and with the way in which Americans like to pretend
that any complex situation is about anything except a power struggle. So they're always
personalizing things. We don't get along as opposed to he's got all the power
and he doesn't, right that that kind of thing, which is, you
know, that's the race narrative in this country is you know, why can't
we just get along? Well, why can't we have a system where you
know, one group has the same amount of power as the other group.
That's the issue. It's not it's not a personal question. It's not about
you know. So these are these are things I guess as I've gotten older,
that I've gotten far more interested in. I don't think I'm a lone
voice. I just because I think there's lots of people say that. I
just think I think, maybe, um, maybe I would only say that
there aren't enough voices. Maybe that's it that you have to shout awfully hard
to be heard in this country. So I would I'd like to be surrounded
by a thousand others saying the same thing. Um. But you know,
the the amount of kind of um, the the this in this second season
and what I'm what I get out a lot is how much euphemism there is
in the way Americans describe social problems. And it bothers me that they're not
just more honest about it. Um. You know, there's just all this
great attempt made to um to to pretty five things is that there's two shows
are just about fairy tales that we've told about civil rights that just aren't plainly
they're just it just didn't happen that way, right, But no one is
interested in seat of going back. We're so deeply invested in in this very
night nice little heroic story and you know, we've we've turned our backs on
that kind of messiness of real life. I wanted to follow up a little
bit more on Carlos doesn't remember you talk about the the Lennox, California area
where Carlos was in middle school. I actually remember that school system at that
time. At a certain point when my daughter was one, we lived in
Marina del Rey, and so that was that was going to be an option
for her to go to school, and that actually was the catalyst because you're
write in describing it as like a concentration camp. It was one of the
main decision points about saying because my my wife at that time was working at
this lush school in private school and Pacific Palisades, you know, where Tom
Hanks kids went and all that, but that's not where our kids were going
to go. My kids were going to go to Lennox and that forced us
to make the decision to move to North Carolina. We would have a better
opportunity. You mentioned, yeah, go ahead, I had no idea.
I had no idea. You live done there, that's funny. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, you know you you mentioned that. You know, with
a lot of these kids, you know, they have to be they have
to have an intervention almost in the first five years of their lives because by
the time they you know, they hit middle school, they're already getting affiliated
or you said eighty percent or getting affiliated, which is which incredible, is
incredible? Yeah, How emotionally difficult was it doing that story? I mean,
do you have you heard anything further from Carlos? Oh, Carlos,
there was a The story I heard was that Carlos was in a summer program
because he's a really, really really he's a very very smart kid. And
he was doing this in rich summer program on the West Side. You know,
it's some fancy place, and his teacher made the class listen to that
episode. So they all listened to the episode and then Carlos, of course
his real name is in Carlos, so they don't know as him. And
so he puts his hand up and he says, that's me, and like
the whole class is like what. And he gets up and he talks about
it to them. And this was described to me because told to me because
he had been very reluctant to talk about his family life, and so he
got up and and I just I thought, I mean, that was the
kind of if this if the episode was not emotional enough, that was the
emotional um kind of capstone. Um. Yeah, they're very some of those
whore they're very Uh, they're hard to do. They're they're not hard to
do in the moment. The interview is not the hard part. What the
hard part is that sitting and listening to the tape and figuring out what you
want to say and then recording it. That's when it that's when it sort
of hits you because in a moment you're you know, you have your kind
of journalists objectivity protecting you, but you don't when you when you're just listening
to the tape all by yourself. Can I can I move to food fight?
That's sure? Oh yeah I didn't. Okay, first off, I
didn't know you worked in the kitchen at Trinity because I lived above it.
Well, I was a tally whacker. Now, as you will remember,
a tally whacker doesn't work in the kitchen. A tally whacker is an administrator
of the kitchen process. It's all coming back to me. Unfortunately, your
your final conclusion is just suck it up and go to vasser Um, which
is yeah, and I you know you you bring this. You rightly bring
up this pressure kids put on themselves about choosing a college and then thinking it's
the most poor formative us their lives. I mean, then, my middle
daughter has so many spreadsheets in this decision making process of where to apply,
and one of the places is vasser that she's she's considering. When you did
that story, I know you had an intern working on it, but I
think we went to Maine. But you went up yourself to the Vassar campus.
I went to Vasser, and I sent Jacob, my assistant, to
Bodin so Um, and then he went to Vasser on his own to talk
to the kids. I did the administration. I'm too old to interview students
with incredibility, so I let him do all that, but I did the
administration interviews at It all started because I can't remember why. I wasn't intending
to do food at all. For some reason, I got it in my
head that it would be interesting to talk to the president of ass her,
and so I called her up. It's one of the first interviews I did
for the whole season. Called her up, and I went to see her
on New Year's Eve, and she was the only person there, sat in
her office, and she just It's just a super one of those super interesting
interviews that made me think about a million things. But I was originally interested
in something else entirely, and I cannot even remember what it was. But
I just sort of one of those cases where you just get the let the
tape run, and then she takes you in interesting places. But it took
a while for me to understand that the episode was about food. Originally it
was just going to be this very straightforward thing about what it means to be
a college like that wants to have a place for lots of four kids.
And then I realized, oh, there's a way more fun way to tell
the story, and that is to pick on boding because you know, Boden
is the is the antithesis of Assa in this really interesting way. And once
I realized I had a villain, and the villain was so wonderfully villainous.
I mean, you cannot can you ask for a better villain than Bodin,
I mean you can't. This is kind of pretentious, overly wealthy, like
you know, like a little privileged. I mean, it's just like everything
it's just appalling. I mean it's just like everything about it is horrible.
And I knew, well, I mean, how how how much um kind
of back push do you get from say a Boden or print tons when you
do this? Really? Oh my god, Boden denounced me. They issued
press releases. There was like a Twitter war against me. I mean,
but remember it's exactly what I wanted. I mean, I didn't get them
to engage I wanted I wanted. I realized if I was gonna. I
mean I was, I was kind of I was a little bit calculating.
I mean the episode is over the top, right of course. I mean
it's like I mean, it was like it was like the kind of thing
we would have done back in college. In fact, I was thinking very
explicitly of some of our hijinks back in the day. But it was I
was deliberate. I was baiting them, and they took the bait. I
mean like they totally went ape shit. The everything I didn't do, which
I should have done. NPR wanted me to come on one of those afternoon
shows and debate someone from both I really should have done it. I can't
believe I didn't do it. I was busy, I had some reason I
couldn't do it. But um, it would have been I mean, I
can you imagine how much mone I could have had. I mean, it
just would have been just would have been fantastic. We should we should address
this. There's there is that subversive element to the way you do a story.
Um that works on that level where you will will go someone like that
into and then you know it breaks into, for lack of a better term,
a Twitter war. But you're engaging them. And this is as I
recall, this is an old tactic you've had for years. Can you talk
a little bit about you know, you wrote for the student newspaper at Trinity.
I believe it was correct me if I'm wrong. I believe it was
called the Pelican, and it was called it was called No, you're you're
conflating two things. It was called Trinsite Trinsite, remember Trinsite. You're quite
right, it was Trinsite. The Pelican, I think you did. What
was the difference? Pelican Power was a was a mock football newsletter that I
used to post, remember, in which I would I would glorify the Trinity
football team. It had absolutely nothing to do with football anything you wrote,
and yet it did it well. Bruce, Remember we Bruce created character we
since so few people went to the football games, Bruce created Weird of those
who created this character called Wexford Harding, who we claimed was the football coach.
And then Bruce would write these articles by Wexford Harding in the newspaper in
which he would sort of wax elegaic and talk about his drinking problem. And
so it was the whole thing was it was highly amusing, but yes,
no, the provocation. I believe I learned a trinity from the masters of
provocation, and I took those lessons, you know, I feel like there
was any number of brilliant role models of how to get someone's goat, and
I paid careful attention and i've i've I've kept it up since then. People
don't you know people's ability to pick fights. People think it's it's um.
They don't take it seriously enough. There's a real art picking. I'll fight
the right way to provoking your opponent and just you can't. You can't hit
them over the head, and you can't be mean. Right where you can
be you can use the needle. And I always felt like trinity was at
its best. I always think about this moment when it was a college meeting,
all the students and we had a lot of money for some reason because
of the video games we had, and right before the meeting the proms wife's
dog had died because he'd ingested the used conduct in the in the garden of
the and someone came, someone from Saint Mike's College, and for the listeners,
Saint Mike's College was a Catholic college which we were for no, for
no real reason. We were formally opposed to the Catholics. Right there,
someone from Saint Mike's showed up, showed up and asked for like literally one
hundred dollars to go towards a trip to Africa to work with, you know,
refugees, And we had this and everyone instantly in the room saw the
comic possibility in a way that even today I don't really understand. We then
had this long, faux intellectual discussion about not about the question of whether we
should support someone who wanted to help refugees, but whether it was a precedent
that we could whether it was an appropriate precedent for us to be taking discretionary
funds and giving to someone from another college. And everyone loved this totally ridiculous
discussions went on on on and forever. We had a vote. We voted
down the guy from Saint Mike's, and then immediately someone puts their hand up
and says, I propose we give promised five hundred dollars for a new dog,
and it was approved unanimously. I remember that moment thinking this is absolutely
brilliant, this is how you do it right. It's hilarious. It's like
completely subtle, it's totally outrageous. It so provokes this poor guy from says,
but there was a kind of collective understanding of how to do the joke
if it's never forgotten. And I've all I remembered that I have aspired to
that kind of cleverness ever since. Well, and to my mind, that's
exactly what's going on when you're interviewing John Hennessy, the President of Stanford,
is that you're slowly opping the stakes and saying, how how far can I
take this? If? If, if, what would you do with you
know, ten billion dollars and see if he can respond with a straight face.
And he does. You say he barely. He says I could never
consider that, and then within two seconds he has an answer. Yeah,
and that was hilarious. That was like a gift from God. The whole
time that was happening, I was like, just I was just I had
my eyes on my tape of quorder. I just I was like, dear
God, I hope I am recording this because if I if you know,
if I missed this, man, I've lost an opportunity. Yeah. That
was It's rare that someone takes the bait like that, and yeah he did.
Did you ever get to your mind? I mean we should say so,
so Hennessey establishes this night Hennessy Scholarship, a hundred of the best and
brightest in the country will come to a graduate program at Stanford in order to
solve the most important problems, the world's hardest problems. Did you ever get
to your mind a satisfactory answer as to what those problems were in there?
You know, to spend that amount a month? Yeah, I didn't.
I was almost. I mean, he mentioned a couple, but they so
clearly were not the world's biggest problems that I you know that the question remains
open um. He wanted to. He just mentioned the one of trying to
figure out why Mark Zuckerbird's gift to Newark wasn't working out the way, which
was just another billionaires you know, like so it was like it seemed awfully
kind of well, it was a it was a dog chasing its own it
was a billionaire dog chasing its own tail. At that point. No,
I didn't. I mean, look, these it's not about they pretend that,
but it's ultimately just a it's another medal for kids with lots of medals.
That's what it is. It's an eight hundred million dollar medal that you
give to award some winner in order for that person to say I'm a winner.
And you know that's you know, it's foolish to try. And um,
we didn't do it any more than that. That's all it is.
You know, it's like and they needed a million to do it. I
mean, it's just a kind of it's the luna. It was the most
lunatic. The minute I heard about that, I was like, this has
got to be a joke. I mean, it ken and it's not.
It's like it's real. Well, I mean I certainly watched the video.
They have a four minute video launching, oh you know, and it's got
the good it's got the drone shots of the campus, it's got Condoleeza Rice.
I think innovation is mentioned six times. Um, And then they have
the nerve to talk about diversity, and what they really mean is geographic diversity.
You know, we'll pick this person, this elite person from this country,
from this country. But as as you say, it's it's absolutely antiphetical
to what you talk about in the case, Um, Hank Rowland's idea in
order to have a or a vasser idea of you have a classroom with true
diversity in that way that you know, the hedge fund manager's daughter learns from
you know, the janitor's son, who are both at the same college.
How how how how important was diversity for you growing up in Elmira or how
aware of it were you or the lack of it? Well, I was,
I mean it's um. I think one of the lessons I've learned from
growing up Elmira was I don't know whether the school environment is necessarily I mean,
I think it was very, very useful for me to go through the
end of high school in a community where the overwhelming majority of kids we're not
going to college and had parents who had not gone to college. Um.
I think that was really useful at the end of the day. Apart from
that may be the wrong word to use, but if we're thinking about it
in you know, kind of what did it mean for me? I think
it does ground you in something other than the rarefied world you could end up
in. So I'm grateful that I went through that experience. And I think
as well, if especially if you're in the business of I'm in them.
I'm in the the mass media business. I write for a wide audience,
and it's really hard to learn how to write for a wide audience if you've
never spent time with a wide audience. Right, So, in that sense,
I think it beautifully prepared me for what I was what I wanted to
end up doing. But more than that, you know, the deeper thing
is, I think it wasn't It wasn't just school. I mean, there's
so much a focus on school as the primary engine of of kind of diversity.
It's but I think you're the town you live in and the neighborhood you
live in is probably even more so that I wonder whether it's part of the
same problem we were talking about earlier, when you we put so much pressure
on the school to do everything, and you forget that kids just aren't in
school for that many hours, that most of their life is outside of school,
and who their neighbor is, and who they run into when they go
down the street, and who they play sports with. Those matter to me
almost more. I would be if I thought that people that kid, that
kids would meet people different from themselves when they played sports, I would be
very happy. I almost feel like that matters more than having a kid who's
different from you sitting two rows over in math class, you know, doing
something active, or having being in the kids in your scout troop, being
different from you when you're out in the world and engaging with people outside the
classroom. Those are I think much more important lessons. Well, I mean,
I think that's absolutely right. My my my experience growing up in my
neighborhood in Montreal was richly diverse. My experience going to college was not diverse
at all whatsoever. Yeah, and at that point would it have really had
ye in a fact, Yeah, although you know, it's funny, my
experience at Trinity was very diverse, if only because there was a certain kind
of person who I'd never met, kind of ruling class kids before. So
it was reverse diverse. It was like, you know, these kids,
these diplomats, kids who went to Upper Canada College or whatever, are or
what's the one in um, what's the one in Ottawa? The fancy one
or yeah, I know, well if they went to bray Booth School,
the private school in Montreal. Yeah, and you're you're right. So there
you are at Trinity and you're rubbing you know, shoulders with the son of
the former Bank of Canada, and you're kind of going, what that's like,
that's interesting, you know that I found that totally fastly. I did
not know anyone like that, and I didn't know. I remember telling my
dad and can't believe I said to him. I went home my father and
I said, you know, of all of the fathers of the kids on
my floor, you make the least money. He took it. I didn't
mean it in a horrible way. I was just pointing out to him.
It's like what I meant was, this is a weird place that I'm going
to college, Like you're a college professor and you're you know, we're the
I'm the poorest family on my floor. And he of course, maybe I
think I think I offended him deeply, but but it's true. I mean,
you know, it's weird. I when I was in high school,
my father would have been, you know, one of the very well the
people in high school and then in college. Literally I mean, I mean
I basically did the math in my head and was like, you know,
I don't think I don't think. I don't think he's anyone to the top.
I've read that. Um. As a as a child, you kind
of have the run of your father's of the campus at University of Waterloo,
being able to kind of float through there freely and explore. And is that
true? Is there? And did that have an affect in you? I
mean not, I mean it might be a slight exegeration. I used to
go with him. My fondest memories of childhood are when I would go with
my father. I would skip school, go with him to the university and
spend the day in the library the university, which I just thought was the
greatest thing in the world and still do. Um. But uh, yeah,
there was a kind of um by virtue of parents who are intellectually minded.
You just get access to a world. I mean we did two things.
We read a lot of books and we traveled, and we and my
parents had friends who read a lot of books and traveled, and you know,
that was that that was an incredible luxury and so yeah, that was
I had. I think of my upbringing as being extraordinarily privileged. I mean,
I can't imagine it being any better. Shall we talk a little bit
about Deportees Club, Yes, let's do that. So this is your episode
where you kind of talk about the difference between an artist who's sort of like
a one off, a one and done, say like an Orson Wells he
makes Citizen King, that's it, as opposed to in this case, what
you use, I guess is Elvis Costello's song Deportees Club and then further on
Leonard Honsluyah, which were really long, iterative processes to get to the final
um positive outcome. But beyond all that egg headedness, let's just say that
Deportees Club is one of the worst songs you've ever heard, I've heard,
I've ever heard. Definitely, Yeah, it's terrible. So and I remember
the summer that album came out Good Goodbye Cruel World, because it was coming
off the heels of not exactly I think which one it was, maybe Imperial
Bedroom, an album that was so good, and so there was a great
sense it's after punch the Clock. I think it is right. Yeah,
um, do you want to talk about that a little bit? And maybe
not so much Elvis Costello, but that episode and what led to it,
Yeah, I wanted to do. UM. I can't remember what came first.
I was. I just went across this great book that had been written
about Hallelujah. Um, and I so I just I just I read it,
and then that guy was in New York, so I just met with
the author and I was just really taken by I've always been fascinated by this
notion of the slow developing yet and I hadn't realized that song had such an
extraordinarily long lead up. And I think originally it was just going to be
a song, a piece about Hallelujah. But what I realized with these podcasts
is that you they're always better when there's a B story, and if the
b story is personal, one of the two stories is personal. Books.
Even the absolutely perfect podcast from from my original history in my mind is two
stories that are that overlap but are not same. One is personal, one
is not. One has a deeper theme, and you you toggle back and
forth between the two of them. That's the kind of format that I think
is ideal. And so I I just got to thinking about Deep Ortis Club
when I was reading about Hallelujah, just because I oh, I know why,
because somebody I bought a turntable, and someone as a gift gave me
good Bye Cruel World, and I listened to it. But I listened to
it like I hadn't. I don't think that was one Alma album I never
bought. And I listened to it and realized that there was. I hadn't
realized that he had done original version of Deep Ortical Deep Ortiese Club. Heard
it for the first time when I was just by accident, when I was
in the middle of doing the story, and thought, oh my god,
first of all, that's terrible, and secondly, um, that's exactly what
I'm talking about, um with all luyah um. So it was another one
of these sermendipitous um I literally hit completely For some reason, I just thought
that that Deportise Club was a was a Depoti was a B side he just
threw out there and never put on an album. I had no idea they
had an origin as a song that had been released on on in a different
form um. And so yeah, it was just a kind of And when
I realized that, I was like, oh, you know, it's better.
That's that's that's just even more interesting to have to have Alvis Costello's side
by side with with And then I spent months fruitlessly trying to talk to Alvis
Costello and failed. So then I decided I would make do with UM,
which has actually turned out very well with his producer. UM, did you
go to London for that interview? Yeah? I did. I was in
London. I did a bunch because there's a bunch of London interviews in the
first season. I just did them all in and go. I loved the
producer. I just thought he was fantastic UM and such a London character.
I mean, you know there we were in Hackney, you know, like
of course, in a pub in Hackney. I mean, I just can't
there was something so fantastic about the English that I can't never get enough of.
UM. And that was part of it. I wondered if you could
preview the new season of Religionist History, What what? What should people be
looking forward to? It is very happy with it. I think it's better
than season one. It's a little more, I know what, a little
more what I'm doing now. Um, it's have four civil rights episodes,
UM. Four shows that basically are all about the fifties in the South.
UM. And Uh, they're under und earth some really weird, deepy stuff.
UM. And then I have a really fun piece about sad songs,
country music and sad songs. Um, I have a piece about how McDonald's
ruined French fries. I have a spice, I have a spy story.
I have Um yeah, I have this um thing about World War two,
about the Bengal famine of nineteen forty three. Who caused it? Um?
You know it's like saying, well, it's like it jumps all over the
place. Um, like at one on golf. The opening one is about
golf. Um. It's the title is Good Walk Spoiled Rich People in Golf,
a philosophical investigation. It's it's all about it is essentially it is exactly
that, a philosophical investigation of why rich people are obsessed with golf. And
I en missed the end of actual real life philosopher and we we into it.
It's a really fun episode. That's that's what opens it up. Um.
But uh yeah, no, I'm very excited about it. Well,
I don't want to take up too much of your time. I want to
end with something called like a lightning round. It's just for people to get
to know I guess a little a little better. So I'll just take you
through a bunch of questions here, all right, Um, Malcolm Gladwell,
what what book are you currently reading? I'm currently reading an old Len Dighton
thriller called Funeral in Berlin. Really, I wouldn't have thought that at all.
Um, what are two things on your LinkedIn profile that we might not
actually know about you? Are you even on LinkedIn? I have no idea.
No, I'm not. Okay, I mean I am. I yeah,
but there's no substance to it, so I wouldn't even know what I
have on it? All right, I'll reframe the question. What are two
things we might not know about you? I'm an obsessive track and field fan.
Yeah, um that's one. Uh, that's another, well and right,
and a massive car enthusiast. Yes I have. I have, for
example, a back issues of every issue of Car Magazine, which is the
great car magazine called Car, going back to the early nineties. I had
no idea as a kid you sent away for all those brochures? Right,
Yes, why did you do that? Because I am a car not and
I continue to be. I have not changed in that respect. What's the
first concert you ever saw? Good Brothers? The Good Brothers were a We're
a seven Ontario um bluegrass band who I saw a nineteen seventy seven. Oh
boy, then what was the second conscious? Might have been the Mercy Brothers,
who were a southern Ontario country band. Um who a very good one
actually? Uh that they were from Elmira, okay, Um. They did
a very good version of Old Loves Never Die. They just fade away.
The third concert I saw was a Bruce Springsteen councert. I believe, so
Um, what was your favorite cartoon growing up? Judensberry A show you like
to binge watch? Uh? The oa? What's the oh? The oa?
Yes? Yeah, it was done by two friends of mine. I
love that show. When you're in Toronto, where do you like to go
to lunch? Uh? Good question? You know Toronto for lunch always suddenly
baffles me? Um, but uh you know I hung out on even I'm
boring either Queen Street West Corridor or even better neighborood. I really like is
UM's High Park, um on Ron's sales, pick pick someplace on Well,
Hey, Malcolm, I really appreciate you taking your your time this afternoon to
have a have a talk, and I wish you a great day. Thank
you, John and so Um, thank you, and I will I won't
be able to do this right away, but I will by the end of
the day, I'll send you the file. So here's the thing about the
wedding. And if you haven't even heard the Moth yet, here's what I
suggest you do. Go and google glass Well the moth her Way. Pause
this, go do that. Listen, take you all fifteen minutes and then
come back and we'll we'll talk about her Way. So so everything in Malcolm's
story her Way is true, with a few changes. A couple of names
were changed for obvious reasons, although not not very protectively. Pretty much,
let's slip who Craig is at one point. And the wedding wasn't in in
Arizona. The wedding was in San Diego, California. It was along a
highway. All I remember was like the four oh five, A lot of
concrete, a hotel downtown San Diego, a whole lot of concrete. The
reception wasn't at some steakhouse. The reception I was at the Coronado Hotel in
San Diego. And all of that, all of it, though, is
absolutely true. We did do at a rehearsal dinner, or we I did.
That's me who read out the list of names with the with the the
script was pouring out of my pocket. There's so many women's names and all
of that. I do remember having some momentary regrets potential of who should we
really go on with this the next day because we were already planning. I
think we had already written a couple of verses, or at least knew we
were going to sing a song the next day at the wedding. What else
do I remember? Dick the the defense contractor, father of the bride was
he kind of looked, you know, he kind of looked like Elie Yost.
If I think everybody nowadays knows the producer Graham Yost, who, among
other things, produces The Americans on Fax. Graham Yost's father was a guy
named Elie Yost who had a TV show on I think it was Saturday evenings.
It was like the Saturday Afternoon Movie in Ontario, and that was Elie
Yost, and Dick looked very much like Eyst. I remember there was a
wedding cake there. It was this three tiered affair on Plexi glass. You
know, it kind of looked like from the Jetsons, with each tier of
Plexi glass being like a different you know world within Jetson's world. And I
think at some point later in the evening I face planted the cake. I
think that did happen. A lot of detailed boys serving chicken satte. Yeah.
Yeah, the whole thing just got completely out of hand. I ended
that evening upstairs and the rooftop by the pool and the jacuzzi naked, and
the jacuzzi with a bottle of champagne. And Malcolm walked by and saw me
and said, a lore, you mad genius, and tore off all his
clothes and join me in the jacuzzi. So this was the kind of affair
that we thought it should be and that it devolved into. And then of
course the next day, yeah, we ruined a friendship and a wedding,
and just to prove that I am the John Malcolm's Moth story, Malcolm mentioned
the song big in Goofy done to the tune of Feeling Groovy, but then
he said he didn't remember the further verses. Well, I remember them,
and the final verse went like like this, there's no trick, I won't
turn, there's no promise I'll keep. I'm stupid and boring. I'll put
you to sleep. Keep integrity right the fact out of my life I am
a claude who's big and goofy. So the question should always be did we
learn the lessons of that fiasco? Did we ever get smarter in these affairs?
And I would say yes, but with the caveat that going forward,
always there were a couple of variables missing from the toxic mix. So years
later I would go to other weddings, but you felt that the groom or
whoever you were being there, you were representing there as a friend in that
capacity if if you had a inappropriate toast or remark, you felt they might
take it better than potentially Craig did. That was the first thing. The
second element that was always missing from future weddings was a lot of the players
from that her Way San Diego wedding In the future weddings were there, but
not all of them, and certainly not Malcolm. And there was there was
always with Malcolm there a danger, a potential. Malcolm was like this enabler.
He was like a gateway drug. Certainly when he and I got together,
a danger that things could get gravely out of hand. So cut forward
twenty years and by this time it's already been I believe like maybe two or
three years since Malcolm has done this story on the Moth. And we both
get invited to a wedding in New York. And if I collect it correctly,
Bryce was Malcolm's childhood best friend and he was my college best friend,
so he had this connection and and Bryce was not someone who you did.
You did not want to screw up his wedding by Bunny any token. And
we were older at this point, we were supposed to be wiser, and
although instruction wasn't given to us, it was known by several parties at that
for that wedding weekend what had happened and who had done it. And there
there was there was a sense of foreboding surrounding the affair, that something potentially
could go horribly wrong that you had over which you had no control. And
this this started very early, I remembered. I think one of the first
events was was drinks at a bar in Brooklyn and I and I entered the
room, many familiar faces there, and I looked across us the room and
there was Malcolm and my first reaction was, oh, my god, don't
look him in the eye, because it's gonna be like a virus. If
you guys get out of control, there's going to be no stopping you,
and you won't even know when it's happening. It will start with a few
words in conversation and then it will quickly escalate and devolve until it's it's too
late and there's no turning back. So there was just this intense sense of
foreboding and whatever you do, you need to be like hyper conscious of your
your behavior because you can't screw it up. And I don't even think I
exchanged but two words with Malcolm that entire weekend, nor he with me,
because we were so hyper aware that we could catch this infection, this this
virus that would prove once again that we were not smart enough to just screw
up the most important day of someone's life. Next day, we're wedding at
the chapel and followed by a reception. I believe that it was the Botanical
Gardens in in Brooklyn, and again the situation was sort of repeated, and
you know, you were you never knew what might throw things. It's it's
like, was it should you have ordered that San Pellegrino instead of a bourbon?
Did you you know would you potentially say something you know inappropriate. Would
you would you laugh inappropriately at a toast that everyone would just go, oh
god, here goes again. Um, And and there was there was a
moment of worry that Bryce was also a journalist, and so there were a
lot of There were a lot of people slightly famous people who attended this who
I mean, I knew who they were, but I didn't know them.
And David Carr from the late David Carr from the New York Times was there.
Brian Steltler was there. I believe Sam Sifton from the Times, that
food critic might have been there. There was some famous food critic there.
And at one point after dinner, I got cornered by a bunch of them.
And it was car who was sort of leading it, and he started
in he was like our year, the John from the wedding, right,
And I'm like, oh my god, this And so I'm trying to I'm
like, yeah, yeah, I am, did it really happen? Was
that true? So I'm I'm trying to be really, you know, like
a biographer, telling him factually what happened, without enjoying any of it,
because I figure if I start enjoying it, they'll start enjoying it, and
then again, you know, the virus will catch us and someone will do
something wrong. And Malcolm again wisely, wasn't around. We avoided each other
all night. But you know, in the end, I'll say, I'll
say this, we behaved ourselves and we proved that we we could be smart
and and that we could just go to an event like this finally twenty years
later and not say a thing, and not steal folk and simply have a
good time, because that's what your hosts wanted you to do, to participate
in the dance without monopolizing the dance in any way. And at the end
of it, the final thing was Malcolm was asked to give a toast and
he and of course there was a little again this was this was provoking the
situation because although although you you you imagined that Bryce had spoken to him,
you didn't quite know what potentially again could happen. But Malcolm gave one of
the most remarkable wedding toasts to friendship that I have ever heard. It was
eloquent, was urbane, it was humorous, and it was completely sincere.
So that is my wedding story. We did it his way. This has
been Who Killed Teresa? And I'm your host, John Allre. If you
liked what you heard, please leave us a comment on iTunes, and please
leave Malcolm comment on iTunes as well. His podcast Revisionist History is available there
and we are now approaching episode two of season two. Have a listen.
Check it out. It's good stuff. Finally, you can follow me on
Twitter at Justice Guy. That's at jus t Us Guy. Now I think
about her and not living speak herring. No one now wants love her,
but I'll never feel say the loneliness is gone down and I'm not saying today
O love live die. They just made away. Now die. They just
say all love and die. They just made away and die. They all
love die. They just made a way