Malcolm Gladwell on 25 Years of Writing Books That Make the World Think

We have a legend on I’d Rather Be Reading today, friends. None other than Malcolm Gladwell is here to talk about his latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering, which is out October 1. Revenge of the Tipping Point comes nearly 25 years after Malcolm’s 2000 book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, a bestseller that took his career to the next level and ushered in a new genre of books. Today on the show we talk to Malcolm about what made him want to return to the concept of The Tipping Point and if there was unfinished business there; what a tipping point is, exactly; and how, as he writes in Revenge of the Tipping Point, “the very same tools we use to build a better world can also be used against us.” As he puts it, Revenge of the Tipping Point is a study of the underside of possibilities he explored a quarter century ago. We talk about social engineering, social epidemics, monocultures, overstories, his process, and how we can use tools necessary to control an epidemic to build a better world. So much here, and I’m excited to dig into all of it with you listeners today. Malcolm Gladwell is someone I’ve mentioned on the show before — I’ve read all of his books, and I’m a big fan. He is a journalist, author, and public speaker who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. In addition to publishing seven New York Times bestselling books (and I have no doubt his latest, his eighth, will become a bestseller, too), he is a podcaster — his show “Revisionist History” is a must-listen. His work is in the realm of sociology and psychology, social sciences, and after the success of The Tipping Point in 2000, books like Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath, Talking to Strangers, and The Bomber Mafia followed. His books are massive bestsellers, he’s one of the forefront thinkers of our time, and has even been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people. Revenge of the Tipping Point marks Malcolm’s eighth book, and I’m thrilled to chat with him about it today. I also want to throw this in here for good measure — he has a cat named Biggie Smalls, so that’s absolutely amazing. Take a listen.

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell