Zibby's Interview with Malcolm Gladwell

[1:25]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Happy Memorial Day, everybody. I hope you guys have a great weekend and that you're relaxing and enjoying life and getting time to regroup and listen to podcasts and read and everything that you enjoy doing. All of the podcasts I'm releasing today, which marks the start of my June early summer book blasts, so welcome to that. All of them have a military based theme in honor of all of the wonderful people who we are thinking of today for this Memorial Day. So all of them have a common theme, listen to all three and enjoy. I did an Instagram Live with Malcolm Gladwell for the GMA Book Club Instagram account. I am a contributor to Good Morning America and I write their monthly book picks and I do a lot of Instagram Lives and a lot of times I go in their stories and talk about different books. So if you haven't subscribed to gmabookclub, you should definitely do that. Anyway, I interviewed Malcolm Gladwell live and it was interrupted quite brutally by the fact that my son, who is six years old, kept FaceTiming me from the kitchen over and over and over again so much that the whole Instagram live froze, and I had to, like, regroup and try to figure out how to fix it. In addition to that, Malcolm couldn't get his audio to work for, like, the first five minutes, and then there were, like, a thousand comments streaming in and hearts going up. And honestly, somebody were trying to mess me up, this is what they would have done. So I just had to, like, focus in, laser focus, and keep talking to Malcolm because this was a total treat and joy and, you know, wish list item for me to interview Malcolm Gladwell. If you're not familiar with his work, Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. And now a sixth New York Times bestseller, The Bomber Mafia, which is what we talked about. He's also the cofounder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcast's Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Hedlum interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in Time's 100 most influential people list and touted as one of foreign policy's top global thinkers. I hope you enjoy our live and that you couldn't tell how totally flummoxed I was. Thank you for doing this interview. Thanks for coming on GMA Book Club and doing it and talking about your book. And I feel so empty handed talking to you, having listened to everything and not like holding it up with my folded down pages like I normally would. But wow, what a book to listen to, to experience. It was like a movie in my ears. It was amazing. So for people who haven't yet had time to sample the Bomber Mafia, would you mind telling everybody everything you have in your sort of listener's guide, which is also, by the way, amazing, about how you came up with this idea, air conditioning and all. Well, I I was in Tokyo

[4:56]Malcolm Gladwell: in about a year and a half ago, and I went to a little tiny museum on a side street, a little private museum that looked like a dentist's office. And it was a museum dedicated to the memory of one night of the Second World War, the night when the US Air Force firebombed Tokyo, one of the most dreadful nights of the war. 40,000 people were killed in one night. And I was just so moved and overwhelmed by this that I wanted to find out more. And I wanted to so I started on this kind of long journey that ended in this book, which was how did we get to the point as a country where we firebombed Tokyo on the night of 03/09/1945? And it's a story that begins in Alabama in the 1930s and includes a crazy Dutch inventor and, you know, this romantic general named Haywood Hansel who would sing show tunes to his men as he flew back from Europe. And another guy, Curtis LeMay, who never said more than three words at any one time, and who was the most kind of intimidating and brutal and ferocious military leader maybe in the whole war. Mean, it's just the whole every time I turned around, the story took on new dimensions. And so the result is the bottom mafia.

[6:17]Zibby Owens: Wow. And what made it about this story that you decided to make it the audiobook is, like, the main attraction? Because it's a story you have to hear.

[6:26]Malcolm Gladwell: I mean, it's one is that all of these characters that I'm trying to bring to life, these generals from the Second World War, these we have them all I mean, the Second World War, we have tape of them. I mean, it's not like I'm writing about the Middle Ages. So when I'm talking about these people, I thought it was so important to hear their voices. And when I talk about, you know, the victims of this bombing attack, I thought you had to hear the victims. And when I'm talking to contemporary historians who are wrestling with what happened that day in in Japan, you have to hear their voices too because they're not pronouncing on this like it's a simple matter. They're they're still trying to figure out what the right decision was. And I also realized the Air Force had these incredible archives just full of all of this sound. And and I also at Pushkin, this company that I'm a part of, we have this team of people who are just wizards. I mean, who could make magic out of sound. And so all of that together made me think, instead of writing a book and then going into a studio, into a little closet and recording it for three days, I want to do the opposite. I want to create a sound experience, something just to kind of pull you in. And then there'll be a book version too. If you want to read it on if you want to go that, that's cool too. You know, I don't have problems with that. But it was just an opportunity to create something mesmerizing. And I think we did that.

[7:54]Zibby Owens: I think you did too. I have to say, listened to the first part of it while walking home from dropping my daughter at school. And then I got home and I was like, well, I don't really want to be home and stop listening. So I was like, I guess I'll just grab the dog and take the dog out for a long walk now. Anyway your exercise. You're now I'm sure you're in, like, way better shape as a result of my book. This is very pleasing to me. It's dual function. Your book is a weight loss tool and a history, tome and entertainment. There you go. I mean, what more can you ask for in audiobook? But I was really struck by how amazing it was to feel like you're watching an old movie essentially in your ears while you're going about normal life and just hearing the the sounds and all of it. I mean, describing it is not doing it justice, but it's so immersive to hear that. So it was it was really neat. It was like such a great experience as a listener. FYI.

[8:47]Malcolm Gladwell: Yeah. I mean, but, you know, this is the this is what's interesting is normally, you know, when you do an audiobook, like I said, you just go into a studio for three days, and it costs $10,000. We spent months and, I mean, probably $200,000 just making it sound the way it sounds. So it's like, this was like a huge undertaking. I it's also cool because it changes your notion of when I write a book, a print book, I think of myself as the author. With this book, I don't think of myself as the sole author. I mean, I think of myself as being part of a team. And that's a totally different thing. And I think it's important when people, when you experience this, remember it's just not Malcolm. It's Malcolm in collaboration with It's like, you know, it's not me all by myself. I have this whole group around me and they created this as much as I did.

[9:43]Zibby Owens: Well, I just recorded my own audio book for an anthology I wrote and that cost $0. And I was like downstairs in my basement on my own computer. So this sounds like a huge step up from that experience.

[9:55]Malcolm Gladwell: Oh my gosh. Call us up. Call us up. We'll do.

[9:59]Zibby Owens: Okay. Back to bombing in the air force just to this is literally like it's like, can someone make something more distracting between, like, the things on the screen and the phone calls? Anyway, here I am. Okay. I hadn't given a lot of thought to how difficult it would be to drop And growing up in today's time, I just kind of assume, okay, like you point out in the book, you take your little aim and you program it and boom, you just drop and it should land somewhat there. But I didn't think about what had happened between World War one and World War two and what could actually the opportunities that opened up and how it was like you're driving in a car at 50 miles an hour trying to get something into a garbage can. And that's like and that so many variables went into successful execution from the wind to humidity and the like, everything. How cloudy was the weather? It seems like a miracle anything has ever hit anything or perhaps a tragedy. Tell me a little bit about how these men revolutionized the whole thing and and and then how the atomic bombs somehow

[11:05]Malcolm Gladwell: made it better. I don't know. Question mark? Yeah. So the the story of this book is the story of a group of people who are trying to solve the central problem that faced the Air Force at the beginning of the Second World War, which is that you could build a bomber and you could build bombs, but the bombs, you couldn't figure out how to hit the target on the ground. Because as you said, the physics problem of you're, you know, you're flying at six miles up in the air and you're flying at two fifty miles an hour and the wind is blowing and it's freezing cold in where you are, six miles up, but not cold on the ground. And there's cloud cover, and there's people shooting at you and, you know, on and on and on and on. Trying to drop a bomb that will actually hit something is nearly impossible. And what this little group of guys, and they they call themselves the Barra Mafia, what they tried to what they believed was that if they could figure out the problem of dropping a bomb accurately, they could revolutionize war and in a good way because they said, look. If we could drop bombs where we exactly where we wanna drop them, then we don't need armies anymore. We don't need navy. We don't need the marines. We don't have to kill civilians. All we have to do is to fly over the enemy and just impress upon the enemy that they can do nothing to stop us. So fly over enemy an enemy city. And instead of bombing the whole city and killing hundreds of thousands of people, take out the aqueducts, take out the power plants, take out the bridges. And maybe nobody even dies in those attacks, but the city's crippled and your enemy will give up. And they had this dream. They said, look, wars don't have to kill hundreds of thousands of people. If we're just more surgical and if we use technology to solve this bombing problem, we can have a world war with a fraction of the deaths. And they were this group of guys, and they were all they're all guys, by the way. And they're all down in Montgomery, Alabama in the nineteen thirties, and they really are motivated by this profoundly moral notion. They're not like engineering geeks who just wanna come up with a cooler way of dropping bombs. They're people who wanna save human life. And so they take this vision with them into the Second World War, and they managed to convince all of the higher ups in the American army that let's try this. Let's not do bombing the old way where you just drop bombs and try and kill as many people as possible. Let's try it the more humane way. And they try and they try and they try and they keep trying and they keep failing and they keep trying and they fail and they keep trying and they won't give up. And they're like the most stubborn, persistent, they're obsessed with this idea. And my book is about their obsession And what happens when they finally run out of time? When finally the army says, you know what? It's not working. And the short answer to what happens when it's not working is that that attack on Tokyo, is we switch strategies in midstream, and we go back to killing people by the hundreds of thousands. And it's a heartbreaking story, but it's also like a crazy story. It's like and I found a bit that it was such a contemporary story because I feel like today we're we have these kinds of dilemmas all the time. We have people come up with new technologies and they think they've made a world a better place, but it doesn't work that way in real life. And so that's why that was my kind of impetus to tell this story because I felt like, man, if there was ever a parable for the world we're living in now, it's this. You know, dreamers who carry their beautiful obsession with them all the way to the real world, and then it doesn't work. Right? That's look around. I mean, look around. Like, that's what that's the world we're living in now. Right? All these these kind of shattered technological dreams. But I love the fact they tried. That's the thing. I feel like they're heroes even though they failed. That I want I want my obsessives and my technological dreamers to to to to think big thoughts, right, to have a grand moral purpose. I don't like it when they don't try. That that depresses me. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[17:41]Zibby Owens: Well, and as you point out, all these other inventions, all these other technological inventions like social media and everything that's come, the car. Right? You don't even realize the downsides yet necessarily when everybody heralds the introduction of the invention itself. And it's sometimes only till later that you see these costs that are associated with it. Yeah. I mean, you told the people if you'd gone to Detroit

[18:04]Malcolm Gladwell: in the nineteen twenties when the automobile industry is getting off the ground, and you have said to those guys, you know, this thing that you're really excited about was gonna is gonna kill forty thousand Americans a year and cripple another whatever it is, forty thousand, many of those being young people who are just out having fun, what would they have they would have said, you're crazy. They would have said, I don't believe you. I think they thought they were bringing about a world of freedom and of like, they thought they were coming up with a better way to get around, safer, you know, they had these grand notions of what the automobile was gonna be, and it never occurred to them that car accidents would be something we would live with for a hundred years. And it's the same you know, if there was a time ten years ago when people thought that Twitter was gonna bring about democracy in The Middle East. Remember that? Yes. Yes. Enthusiasm. We honestly thought that Twitter was gonna get rid of all of the dictatorships in The Middle East and not just the Middle East around the world. It didn't happen. Right? Not even remotely. So, like, we go through this cycle over and over again.

[19:11]Zibby Owens: And not to mention the accidents, but also just the fact that so many people now live their lives sitting in traffic. And what does that do to the human existence? Like back to the walking and listening to your audiobook, you know, the alternative is just like endless doldrums and immobility when you think you're supposed to be going somewhere quickly. So Yeah. Yeah. Also not fun. So, yeah, that that was the kind of conundrum

[19:35]Malcolm Gladwell: that I wanted to explore in this book. You know, so, you know, this story, it has such kind of personal resonance because my dad grew up in England in Kent, and Kent was his little town was a was part of the area that all the German bombers flew over when they were bombing London in 1940. And that's those were his childhood memories. And he would tell me these stories. When I was growing up, like, his mother would instruct him to he had to sleep under his bed as a five year old for months. Cause she thought that was the safest place in the house, like as if that's going to stop a bomb. It's the bomb. And then at one point, a bomb drops in my grandparents' backyard. It doesn't go off by some miracle. My dad would tell these stories about like he told me when he was five about these exciting things that happened to him when he was five. I just thought this was the most extraordinary thing I've ever heard. And I've been like, I never lost, know, I've been living with these memories my entire life. And so like to return to this subject as a grown man is the kind of this kind of weird experience because I was describing my dad's childhood, you know, like what he there's a story my mom told me this story about my dad passed sadly a few years ago, but she told me a story when my dad and his little brother, this is in the middle of the German bombing of England, they went strawberry picking with my grandmother. And the German bombers came overhead, and my grandmother told them to lie down in the strawberry field, and she covered them in newspaper. It's like, I mean, it's making laugh now, but like, what she supposed to do there in the middle of a field? Like, her only thought was, well, maybe if I can make them invisible to the pilots,

[21:20]Zibby Owens: the pilots will leave them alone. I you know, that was her only thing. I mean, you gotta do what you guys do. Right? They have. Do what

[21:28]Malcolm Gladwell: You don't have to cover your daughter in a in newspaper to hide her from the enemy one.

[21:33]Zibby Owens: I'm still trying to get over the idea of trying to put your child to bed underneath their beds to protect them from bombs. Like, it's hard enough for me to get my kids to bed, like, in a bed with blankets and, like, a thousand stuffed animals and whatever else. Like, anyway, It's people got very high at a certain point. Yeah. And I think it's so interesting too. I mean, there are a lot of boys who would hear a story about a bomb in the backyard and be like, wow, you know, that's super interesting. And then just kind of store it away. And yet it didn't just stop with that. Like, you developed a complete fascination with it and not an obsession. I wouldn't put you in the obsessive camp, but then enough to dedicate all this time and energy years down the line of really revisiting like the secrets buried behind you essentially.

[22:18]Malcolm Gladwell: Oh, you said, oh, you can call it an obsession. Okay, fine. Well, I don't know. That was a little forward. You know. You know how many books I have on bombing now? I have like, I have four full length long shelves. So what is that? It's probably a 100 books or more, 150 books, half of which I read in the last year. So like, I mean, I've gotten off the deep end. I mean, I really, I got into this. And I was hanging out with like the chief of staff of the, at one point, the chief of staff of the Air Force, who's this wonderful man named General Brown, first African American to run, to head the American Air Force in its history, who he invited me to come down with him to Maxwell Air Force Base, which is the Air Force Base where the Bomber Mafia were based. And so I went to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D. C, and I got on his plane. I mean, you can imagine, the plane that the head of the Air Force flies on. And we flew down to Maxwell, and I spent the day with him. It was just the most amazing experience. And I met all these historians. Of course, everyone in the Air Force was at one point, not everyone, but most of these top generals, they were all at one point in their life, pilots, fighter pilots or bomber pilots. When they talk about this stuff, it's real. It's not some abstract thing. It's not like when I'm talking about it, I don't know what it's like to fly a bomber. They're like, Oh, yeah. And they tell you these crazy stories about being shot down or performing some incredible feat behind the in the cockpit of an airplane and on and on and on. It was just the most amazing it's not a world that I you know, I didn't know Air Force people, but I came away with this incredible respect for what they do and the kind of service they give to this country. Mean, was it really was a very moving experience

[24:13]Zibby Owens: as I dug into this. I feel like you're about to sign up. You're gonna, like, join the air force and, you know, next thing you know, you'll be overhead figuring out a better way to you know, you'll spend your, you know, 10,000 hours, like, figuring out the perfect way to bomb places, and you'll be the next one to, like, figure this whole thing out. If some child of mine said they wanted to join the air force, I would say,

[24:36]Malcolm Gladwell: that is amazing. Like, do it. That is a totally honorable calling in my book. And I would it would not have occurred to me before I wrote this, but I watched there was this thing I watched this summer when there was a they changed the the old, the old Chief of Staff of the Air Force resigned, retired, and they brought in this new guy, General Brown, and you could watch the ceremony online, and it was, I was in tears by the end. It was the most moving. Remember how crazy last summer was with the election and political division and COVID and, like, it was just nuts. Right? It's like I was close to despairing. And then I watched this ceremony and it was the most dignified, the most it was a bunch of people upholding an institution that worked, who believed in their country. They didn't there was no politics. It was all about people who believed in the same goals and values and who believed in the same institution and who committed their lives to a single goal, which was defending this country. And they gave speeches. I mean, at one point, the Secretary of the Air Force was in tears, and people were telling stories about like fallen comrade. I mean, it was just amazing. I mean, I'm now getting emotional just remembering it. And it was, it just restored my faith in my country at a time when I really needed my faith restored. And I remember afterwards I was talking to friends of mine and who worked for television, and I said, you guys should have broadcast that live. Everybody should have seen it. It was like, it's our Air Force. Like, you know, these people serve us. We pay for it with our tax dollars. We we should have seen it. We should all have seen it. And especially, you know, this idea in the middle of all the George Floyd stuff, the fact that, you know, the first African American head of the Air Force was taking over. And what was amazing was there was no, they barely mentioned it. It wasn't like they weren't doing it to make a point. It was like he was the best man for the job. And it was,

[26:36]Zibby Owens: he got up there and I mean, it was like, I felt in that moment, like when we were, when so much stuff seemed like it was falling apart, it was beautiful. Wow, you're giving me such hope. Feel like even just hearing about it makes me feel like it also seems like a scene in a movie. This is like, you know, I don't know if you're planning on some sort of partnership with the relaunch of Top Gun or something, but I don't know. Feel like there's some You're Hollywood's ears.

[27:01]Malcolm Gladwell: Yeah.

[27:03]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. So I know you just are coming out with this amazing experience, audiobookbookeverything. Do you, knowing how long things take in the publishing world, are you already at work on your next book? Is it going to be in the similar format? Are you going back to sort of regular publishing? What's your plan?

[27:22]Malcolm Gladwell: No. I have a I've already spoken. Like this one, it's gonna be an audiobook first. There'll be a print version, but it'll be an audiobook first. And we're gonna try and recreate the same amazing immersive kind of experience and bring all the archival tape. And so, yeah, I've I'm already deep into number two, and I have a whole team of the same team who worked on the Barber Mafia has now been repurposed. We are now, like, on to the next one. So yeah, yeah, I'm I'm in love with this kind of storytelling. I just think it's so powerful. Can you share what it's about or is it a secret?

[27:58]Zibby Owens: Secret? Can

[28:00]Malcolm Gladwell: you keep a secret? It's Can you keep a secret?

[28:04]Zibby Owens: I won't tell anyone.

[28:06]Malcolm Gladwell: Well, I'll say it's about police, about a police chief and what happened to him. And it's relevant to all the debates we're having now, but it's a side of it you haven't heard before, hopefully. So it's a very fresh story. But after the end, if you think about it, you'll realize, oh, I just got a perspective on what we've been going through as a country over the last couple of years. Wow. Well, I feel like that's so on brand for you because you constantly are having readers

[28:38]Zibby Owens: rethink their assumptions about so many things. You know, that fits. I approve. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? You are such a hero of writers and everybody, but what advice would you have for somebody trying to start out? Should we forget? And also, we forget print books? Like, should we all be moving just to audio? No, I think what we should understand is that is there's a million ways to tell a story.

[29:04]Malcolm Gladwell: You know, the days a hundred years ago, there was one way. Right? You wrote a book, and then there was radio, and there was two. Then there was television, there was three. And then there was, like, the Internet, and there was, you know, four and five and six. There's now like 50. And we don't have to only do it one way. We should allow people to experience a story the best way that story should be experienced and the way they want to listen to it. You know, some people want to listen to an audiobook when they're walking their dog. And some people want to read a book curl up in the bed at night. And those are all, you know, those are all equally valid ways to experience something. And I, that's that, the freedom in the world we live in is what attracts me. That now we we don't have to pick. You know, we can do it. And that's that's why, you know, I started this company with my best friend, Bushkin Industries, just to make audio thing, to make we wanted to tell stories in audio. But we never thought we were gonna be that was gonna be the only way people are gonna tell stories. And I think young people should think about that. Like, you don't have to do it one way. Like, sit down and wait before you start and think, what's what do I think is the best way to tell this story? And then go from there. I love that. That's awesome.

[30:20]Zibby Owens: Well, thank you so much. Thank you on behalf of GMA Book Club for doing the live and for moms don't have time to read books where I will rebroadcast our conversation. And yeah, what an inspiring story. And now I'm wondering, you know, what you're going to think of next. I'm now wondering also what you're going to do with like virtual reality. Like, are we going to storytell through that? And I don't know what's next. I'm gonna look to you.

[30:45]Malcolm Gladwell: Oh, thank you. This has been really fun. I really appreciate you, you know, asking me on to talk about the bomber mafia. And, yes, everyone, bombermafia.com. It's like that's where you can find it. Super easy. Bombermafia.com.

[30:57]Zibby Owens: Everybody go there right now or I will have done a terrible job. Go. Go. Go. Okay. Alright. Take care. It's so nice to meet you. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibby owens dot com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.