Malcom Gladwell is a great speaker!

[riverdeep]

I found out about this guy through a podcast, this one:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail478.html

He has a way of discussing intriguing, subtle intellectual ideas in a very easy to relate manner. The above talks about how the introduction of the screen in auditions caused classical music to shift radically and why.

Here's a video of him at TED talking about spaghetti sauce and what we can learn from it. Don't laugh till you check it!

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

[flowomo]

1. you'd enjoy his books....

I use "Blink" in my college class and have for years.

[Richardo]

2. Great writer too - check out 'Blink' and 'The Tipping Point'

:thumbsup:

[riverdeep]

3. I'll be checking those out.

I don't know how he went under my radar. He's been on Colbert several times and maybe it's the format, but I didn't even remember him- completely forgettable there.

[deadmessengers]

4. I saw him speak at a conference earlier this year

Got to see him at RSA (a computer-security conference) in San Francisco earlier this year. It was my first exposure to him, but it sure as heck wasn't the last. I bought Blink and The Tipping Point at a store down the street from the Moscone Center right afterwards. Brilliant, brilliant guy.

[SharonRB]

5. He spoke at one of our company meetings

a few years back -- must have been shortly after "Tipping Point" came out. He really is a great speaker and that was an excellent, very interesting book.

[Jim__]

6. I heard him speak about the Amadou Diallo case on CSPAN2 a few years back.

I think he wrote about it in Blink.

I agree, great speaker. Great story teller.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. ty...great reference,,I love TED

goes along nicely with Science Friday on NPR

:kick:

[riverdeep]

14. I think the best science show on public radio is 'Radiolab'.

Here:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab

They have podcasts of their past shows as well, which is how I listen. And guess what, this week's themed episode on 'choice' has who else but Malcolm Gladwell. My world's are all colliding.

[riverdeep]

8. I think what I especially like is that there's an underlying optimism in his way.

He talks about some pretty dark subjects, stuff that other people would ladle with cynicism or some bland 'well, maybe it'll work' thing at the end. He just says, 'let's find out how things are, and work with that', find solutions. Brilliant.

[Warpy]

9. I love TED lectures in general

and the spaghetti sauce lecture was no exception.

I went all through my childhood hating mustard. Then in the 70s, when the foodie thing started to take off, I chanced upon a small bottle of brown, grainy German mustard. What a revelation! I discovered a whole new world out there!

The problem wasn't that I hated mustard, the problem was that I hated the finely milled, yellow glop the two mustard companies in the US had been producing during my childhood.

Asking the right question is always important when you want answers to a problem. The spaghetti lecture points that out perfectly.

[Maven]

10. I like some of his ideas, but he's a conservative

http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/52014/

[riverdeep]

11. Thanks for the article, interesting read.

But, he's not.

Gladwell, a self-described "right-winger" as a kid — he had a poster of Ronald Reagan on his wall during college — notes that his politics have changed over the years. When he was growing up, Canada was "essentially a socialist country" so "being a conservative was the kind of fun, radical thing to do," he said. "You couldn't outflank the orthodoxy on the left the way that people traditionally did when they wanted to be rebels. There was only room on the right." Now, he plays the flip side

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/books/review/05donadio.html

So, he used to be, as a form of rebellion, but he changed.

Still, good article. I can't say some of his ideas there are that groundbreaking, the Beatles were great because they played in the Cavern Club a lot?

Overall, anyone that can get people to think in something other than black and white is okay be me, even when they get things wrong.

[Maven]

12. Oh good! Thanks to you too.

I hadn't seen that.

[MattBaggins]

13. Great speaker... Bright guy.... Really really bad hair.