244: Malcolm Gladwell: What a True Crime Reveals About the Sin of Indifference

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Jan 12, 2026

Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author and podcaster of Revisionist History, dives deep into the 1988 Alabama murder case and its unsettling revelations about societal indifference. He discusses how powerful storytelling can awaken moral vision by challenging our acceptance of injustice. Gladwell argues that indifference may be the greatest sin of our times and emphasizes the necessity of honoring our community's beauty while acknowledging its flaws. The conversation also touches on the role of storytellers in revealing hidden injustices and the complexities of forgiveness.

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INSIGHT

Indifference As The Central Moral Problem

Malcolm Gladwell argues modern moral failure is often indifference rather than malice.
He defines this sin as a failure even to bother to see or care.

INSIGHT

How Small Errors Cascade Into Catastrophe

Gladwell frames the case as a moral failure cascade where small errors compound into disaster.
He traces multiple trivial mistakes that should have stopped the harm early but instead amplified it.

INSIGHT

Stories Break Predictive Habits

Gladwell says powerful stories betray listeners' expectations and disrupt predictive habits.
Disrupting prediction forces audiences to imagine different moral and social possibilities.

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What causes suffering in our society? Intentional evil? Or something less apparent and possibly more unsettling—indifference?

In this conversation, master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell and host Lee C. Camp explore the moral power of storytelling in light of Gladwell’s latest Revisionist History series, The Alabama Murders. What begins as a devastating true crime account of a 1988 murder in northwestern Alabama unfolds into something far more unsettling: a decades-long moral failure cascade marked not by villainy alone, but by indifference.

Malcolm corresponded and interviewed Lee for the series to understand the religious and cultural context of the narrative. Together, they examine how stories can awaken our capacity to see, care, and imagine a different world.

Key Ideas:

How Story Can Awaken Moral Vision Stories do moral work by helping us see what we have learned to accept as normal—and revealing it instead as a distortion.
Good Stories Betray Expectations Well Powerful stories disrupt our predictions about the world, forcing us to imagine alternative possibilities for justice and goodness.
Take Indifference Seriously Drawing on the insight that “sin is often a failure to bother to care”, Gladwell argues that indifference may be the defining moral danger of modern life.
Honor Beauty Without Blindness Truthful storytelling can hold together love for communities and traditions while honestly naming the harm they sometimes produce.
Forgiveness Should Have an Action Is forgiveness without action actually forgiveness?

⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources and Transcript⁠⁠ for abridged episode with Malcolm Gladwell

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