In 1760, New York City is a bustling community of more than 18,000 people. You can't drink the water unless it's boiled. tanneries arrive by twos and threes and set up along the shore. As the years go by, you watch the water grow darker as the tanneries dump acid into the pond. In his book Far Sited, Stephen Johnson writes that ordinary people rarely have a say in how common resources are managed.
We all face fork-in-the-road moments in our lives. In his 2005 bestseller “Blink,” Next Big Idea Club curator (and this episode’s guest interviewer) Malcolm Gladwell famously argued that snap judgments can be just as effective as meticulous planning. In this lively conversation, author Steven Johnson (“Farsighted”) disagrees, arguing that big, complex decisions require careful thought and scenario-building.