Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of jobs-you-never-knew-existed, Malcolm Gladwell's work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race, consumers and intelligence.
Why you should listen to him:
Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the mundane: cookies, sneakers, pasta sauce. A New Yorker staff writer since 1996, he visits obscure laboratories and infomercial set kitchens as often as the hangouts of freelance cool-hunters -- a sort of pop-R&D gumshoe -- and for that has become a star lecturer and bestselling author.
Sparkling with curiosity, undaunted by difficult research (yet an eloquent, accessible writer), his work uncovers truths hidden in strange data. His always-delightful blog tackles topics from serial killers to steroids in sports, while provocative recent work in the New Yorker sheds new light on the Flynn effect -- the decades-spanning rise in I.Q. scores.
Gladwell has written two books. The Tipping Point, which began as a New Yorker piece, applies the principles of epidemiology to crime (and sneaker sales), while Blink examines the unconscious processes that allow the mind to "thin slice" reality -- and make decisions in the blink of an eye. A third book is forthcoming.
"Pure Gladwell: cutting through conventional wisdom to define a new way of understanding how something works."Washingtonian
Blog Posts on TED
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Changing the World One Cookie at a Time – November 15, 2005
Speaking of Malcolm Gladwell, I bumped into him at a story-telling fundraiser last night, and reminded him of the brilliant talk he gave at TED2004 about Howard Moskowitz and the search for perfect pasta
sauces. Turns out that at the same conference he bumped into another TEDster who wanted to talk to him about cookies. The result: another great story that the New Yorker just released to the Internet, starring Steve Gundrum of Mattson (and his colleague Barb Stuckey, who joins in February for the first time).You might think that a five-year obsession to create a new cookie is a little strange... except this is no ordinary cookie. It had to be both mass-market... and healthy: A hard problem; and one solved not so much by the wisdom of crowds, but a little individual inspiration.
If you have an interesting tale that sparked from a recent TED, please let me know...
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Gladwell v. Levitt, Round 2 – March 16, 2006
At a landmark TED salon last spring, economist Steven Levitt and author Malcolm Gladwell crossed swords over the real reason New York City crime dropped in the 90s. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell credited the innovative policing tactics adopted under NYC Mayor Giuliani (which focused on softer "lifestyle crimes," like subway graffiti and zoning violations) for the reduced murder rate. At the salon — and in Freakonomics (which had just been published that week) — Levitt begged to differ. The hidden cause, he argued, was the legalization of abortion, which had prevented thousands of unwanted children from being born roughly 20 years earlier. (Levitt further argued that New York's drop in violent crime was merely the leading edge of a nationwide trend, consistent with the timing of respective states' abortion laws). Who had the last word? Well that's an open question ... Nearly a year later, they've picked up the thread, trading persuasive posts on their respective blogs. Gladwell re-opened the discussion, Levitt and Dubner responded. And you can watch it progress from there ...
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Vote for your favorite public intellectuals – May 1, 2008
Not to be outdone by the Time 100, the journals Foreign Policy and Prospect have together released a list of the Top 100 public intellectuals -- with voting. Many TEDTalks favorites appear on the list, and you can help choose the eventual top 20 by voting for your very own top 5. From Foreign Policy's site:
Although the men and women on this list are some of the world’s most sophisticated thinkers, the criteria to make the list could not be more simple. Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country.
TEDTalks speakers on this top 100 list include George Ayittey, Steven Pinker, Neil Gershenfeld, Malcolm Gladwell, Craig Venter, Al Gore, Richard Dawkins, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Larry Lessig, Steven Levitt, E.O. Wilson, Dan Dennett and Bjorn Lomborg -- and look for upcoming TEDTalks from others on this list, including Paul Collier, who spoke at TED2008 about "the bottom billion."
See the full list of 100 >> -
Malcolm Gladwell & Steven Levitt: It started at a TED salon ... – June 14, 2006
A great TED tidbit we missed the first time around: In TIME Magazine last month, Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell (TED04) wrote a tribute to Freakonomics author Steven Levitt (TED04, TEDGlobal), who was honored as one of the TIME 100. It starts like this:
Not long after Freakonomics came out, Steven Levitt and I had a public debate at a salon in downtown Manhattan. The subject was crime. In my book The Tipping Point, I had argued that the cluster of innovative policing strategies known as "broken windows" played a big role in the dramatic drop in New York City's crime rate. Levitt and his co-author Stephen Dubner argued, to the contrary, that "broken windows" was an illusion and that other factors, like the demographic changes brought about by the legalization of abortion, played a much bigger role. It was a straightforward back-and-forth. Levitt got up and made his case. I got up and made mine. But halfway through, I glanced over at Levitt and had a realization that I'm not sure I've ever had before with an intellectual opponent—that if I made my case persuasively and cogently enough, he would change his mind. He was, in other words, listening. More >>
The above-mentioned event was, course, a TED salon. Held at the TED loft in Tribeca, it featured the friendly, timely debate between Gladwell and Levitt, the week Freakonomics was published. Very pleased to see the salon had as much impact on them as it did on us! -
Beyond the Top 10 TEDTalks: user favorites – July 1, 2008
Last week, TEDTalks celebrated our 50 millionth view by counting down the Top 10 TEDTalks of all time (so far) -- and inviting people to share their own favorites. Here are a few: My favorite is still Susan Savage-Rumbaugh and those bonobo apes. -- S.F., Boynton Beach, Florida Stamets (mushrooms), Isabel Allende (passion), Dave Eggers (schools), and Ballard (ocean) -- not to be missed. -- Marian Angele Majora Carter's talk on her environmental work in the Bronx. -- lydia chadwick Majora Carter's is my absolute favorite! -- Ariel, a TED fan I am dropping a line to say how much I enjoyed Aubrey de Grey's speech on aging. -- Diana Pasley I think Malcom Gladwell is that hidden gem. -- +Jono I nominate Theo Jansen's talk on creating new creatures as one of the "Hidden Gems." -- Paul If your own favorite TEDTalks aren't on the Top 10 list yet -- or you'd like to share your own hidden gems -- write to us at contact@ted.com or post a comment.
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Malcolm Gladwell on TEDTalks – September 20, 2006
Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and best-selling author of The Tipping Point
and Blink
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A tipping point for blogs? – March 2, 2006
Although this week's focus is squarely on TED2006, there's always room on our radar screen for speakers from TEDs past. Especially when that speaker is the incomparable Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink. For those like me, who scan each week's New Yorker for his byline, we can now get a more regular fix. Yes. It had to happen. Malcolm has a blog.
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Quote of the week: Malcolm Gladwell – July 17, 2006
"I think I speak for all writers, when I say that I am delighted by marketing efforts of any sort."
— Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell, commenting in The Guardian on film-style trailers for books, being released online by publishers to build demand for new titles -
Blink: The Movie – November 14, 2005
Here's something we learned last week in LA: Blink, the best-seller from TED favorite Malcolm Gladwell, will be made into a feature film, adapted/directed by Stephen Gaghan ("Traffic"), and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Gladwell will stay involved as executive producer. We're great fans of Blink — and, let's face it, just about anything Gladwell writes — so we were curious to hear what he had in mind for the movie. He tells us, "It takes a single character from Blink -- Silvan Tompkins -- and fashions an entirely new story around him, about what it means to be someone who can read other people's thoughts." Our snap judgment says: Success.
