Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is president and co-founder of Pushkin Industries. He is a journalist, a speaker, and the author of six New York Times bestsellers including The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers,…
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What do you do after you’ve been humiliated at the Munk Debates? You call in the A-Team.
Rudyard Griffiths
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Munk Debates.
Malcolm Gladwell
Not long ago, a few thousand people gathered at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, the fanciest performance space in the city to hear a debate. Parliamentary style, opening statements, rebuttals, closing arguments.
Rudyard Griffiths
So I want all of us to think tonight carefully on our debate motion, be it resolved. Do not trust the mainstream media.
Malcolm Gladwell
Speaking for the resolution, were two prominent journalists.
Matt Taibbi
My name's Matt Taibbi. I've been a reporter for 30 years and I argue for the resolution. You should not trust mainstream media.
Malcolm Gladwell
Taibbi was one of the people Elon Musk turned to when he took over Twitter to publish on Twitter, the so-called Twitter files. With the intent of showing that liberals were meddling with free speech. Matt Taibbi has a massive online following.
Matt Taibbi
I grew up in the press. My father was a reporter, my stepmother was a reporter. My godparents were reporters. Basically every adult I knew growing up was a reporter. So I actually love the news business, but I mourn for it. It's destroyed itself by getting away from its basic function, which is just to tell us what's happened.
Malcolm Gladwell
Taibbi's partner was the prominent English journalist, Douglas Murray. Oxford-educated, beautiful suit, a certain international man of mystery, savoir faire.
Douglas Murray
It's a great pleasure to be here. As Rodya said, I've come a rather long way from the front lines of the Ukraine conflict because I like to see these things with my own eyes for myself and to come to my own conclusions. I came out through Moldova the other day, through London, then got to Toronto and a friend of mine and said, why are you going to Toronto? I said, an invitation to Toronto in late November? Who on earth says no to that? Only a madman would say no to that.
Malcolm Gladwell
On the other side, defending the mainstream media was the New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. A Munk Debate veteran, one of America's strongest liberal voices.
Michelle Goldberg
Think about the big stories of the last five years or so. From the Trump presidency to Covid, to the war in Ukraine. Now, if you had just followed the CBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, they all got some things wrong. But in terms of the big stories, if you paid attention to the mainstream media, you were likely to be much safer and much closer to the truth than if you followed the kind of contrarians. If you followed the people who were saying, don't trust the mainstream media, trust these alternative sources of information.
Malcolm Gladwell
Taibbi. Murray. Goldberg. And then...
Rudyard Griffiths
Michelle's debating partner is a Canadian journalist. Yes, I will claim him as one of our own. A veteran New Yorker staff writer, a podcasting sensation who doesn't love revisionist history. And an internationally acclaimed author. Ladies and gentlemen, Malcolm Gladwell.
Malcolm Gladwell
You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is about what happened when Michelle Goldberg and I attempted to defend the honor of the mainstream media, against its many enemies.
I entered this battle to cheers from my hometown crowd. I grew up not far away and I went to college in Toronto. About a mile from the theater. This whole evening was putting a pep in my step. I'd met with Michelle that morning at breakfast at our hotel. I said to her, we're going to win this thing. How could we not? This is Canada. If anyone is going to trust the mainstream media, it's Canadians. I wrote out my opening comments on the plane, had a lovely visit with my mom, put on my snappiest suit jacket, then strolled out on stage and warmly shook the moderator's hand.
Rudyard Griffiths
Because we want to know, are you open to changing your mind over the course of what you're going to hear in the next 90 minutes? Can you be persuaded to move from the pro camp into the con camp? Or vice versa?
Malcolm Gladwell
I should let you know before we get too far along that I am not someone who gets nervous. I don't get stage fright. I am the son of a man whose personal credo was nothing bad will ever happen. And that's how I felt On the evening of the Munk Debate. The room was packed. I felt the surge of love from my countrymen and Michelle was on fire.
Michelle Goldberg
However, if you followed the mainstream media, you knew that Covid was airborne. You knew that it was more serious than the flu. And you knew that the vaccines were likely to protect you. The Covid contrarians, the contrarian media, the one who were saying not to trust kind of mainstream sources of opinion, were saying this is just another flu. Deaths are going to be 6,000. The media doesn't want to tell you. I mean, Matt wrote this several times, the media doesn't want to tell you about Ivermectin.
Malcolm Gladwell
She had Taibbi and Murray on their heels.
Michelle Goldberg
In the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine. Again, I think Matt said that the media is overhyping this, that people are kind of taking stenography from the Biden administration that Russia actually is probably not going to invade.
Malcolm Gladwell
When it was my turn to speak, I tried to build on what Michelle said. The mainstream media was right about things like Covid and Ukraine. Because it's a profession with standards and rules and a long tradition of searching for the truth.
The non-mainstream media is a set of institutions that are outside of that tradition. That have an open and not a closed platform, and you cannot have an open platform and simultaneously adhere to a strict set of professional norms. You cannot say anyone can become a doctor and then complain when the surgeon takes out your spleen in thinking that it's your gall bladder. Right? Now why am I making such a big deal about this? Because trust is not about content. Trust is about process.
I got my journalistic training at the Washington Post, one of the great newspapers in the world. I learned about that process, about what it means to respect the truth from some of the greatest journalists of my generation. This was from the heart. We're nailing this. I thought to myself. And then...
Douglas Murray
I can't sit here and listen to Malcolm Gladwell talking about fact checking and the importance of it. Not to get too mean, Malcolm, I read your book, David and Goliath. The chapter on Northern Ireland is more filled with inaccuracies than any other chapter in a non-fiction book I have read. It is, having written a, not very well selling, but widely acclaimed book on Northern Ireland myself, my book on Northern Ireland didn't sell anywhere near as much as yours did Malcolm. But mine was filled with facts.
Malcolm Gladwell
Oh God. All of us have had the dream when we're walking down our high school corridor and we realize suddenly we're not wearing any pants. That was me in that moment. On the stage of Roy Thomson Hall in front of a few thousand people, suddenly realizing, this is not going well.
Douglas Murray
It's so strange hearing you debate, Malcolm, because you listen to nothing that your opponents say. It's quite extraordinary. I've met it before, but never quite so badly as it occurs in you. You keep saying things that neither of us have said, and then you try to pathologize what we say. Now you know Malcolm, why don't you listen to what comes of our mouths and try to learn something from it as I am with you this evening. But at the moment all I get is you dismissing every single story we come up with, every egregious failure of the mainstream media.
Malcolm Gladwell
A friend of mine afterwards texted me to say, why didn't you tell me you were up against Douglas Murray? I would've warned you to stay home. A simple YouTube search would've shown me that he's a regular at the Fable Oxford Debating Union, a master of the cut and thrust.
Douglas Murray
But I beg you to actually consider the fact that what we are describing is, even if you think not as accurate as you would like, an expression of a problem that is going on in our societies. Functioning liberal democracies need to have trust in their media. And the best that your side has been able to come up with so far tonight is to say, we get things wrong quite often, but you should trust us.
Malcolm Gladwell
You can't see it listening as you are. But Murray had the room in the palm of his hand.
Douglas Murray
Take the Hunter Biden story.
Malcolm Gladwell
Oh, here we go.
Douglas Murray
Okay.
Malcolm Gladwell
I'm sorry-
Douglas Murray
A very-
Malcolm Gladwell
Is-
Douglas Murray
Of course, you don't want to hear it.
Malcolm Gladwell
Is there no way, no end to that kind of Twitter stuff you-
Douglas Murray
Of course you don't.
Malcolm Gladwell
-you guys are going to dredge up here?
Douglas Murray
Of course you don't want to hear it, Malcolm. Of course you wouldn't because it goes against your ideological presumptions.
Malcolm Gladwell
In the Munk Debate, the audience votes on the resolution once before the debate and then again after the debate is over. And the winner is the side that causes the most people to change their minds. Remember the resolution that night was, be it resolved, do not trust the mainstream media.
Rudyard Griffiths
Let's just quickly review where we started out tonight's debate. It was pretty much a split opinion. If I believe it was 48 in favor, 52 opposed. We then asked you how many could change your mind? So let's see what happened over the last 90 minutes. Did either team of these debaters swing opinion one way or another? There we go, 67% in favor of the motion, 33% opposed.
Malcolm Gladwell
It was the biggest swing in opinion in the history of the Munk Debates. We got creamed. I went back to my hotel room, laid down on my bed, stared at the ceiling. And made the mistake of checking social media.
Tweet #1
Malcolm gave the perfect talk to show exactly why nobody trusts his media.
Tweet #2
Malcolm Gladwell has failed as an intellectual in this debate.
Tweet #3
Wow. You got owned. And you were so smug and arrogant as you were getting owned. Be better. You've lost my respect.
Tweet #4
This was a funeral for Malcolm Gladwell's reputation.
Tweet #5
Gladwell's not half as smart as I thought he was.
Tweet #6
Just watched Malc get his butt kicked by Doug and really enjoyed it.
Malcolm Gladwell
I had hit rock bottom.
What do you do after you've been humiliated? You call your mother, of course.
Joyce Gladwell
Tek spoil, mek style. In English it says, when things go wrong, convert them to something that is desirable.
Malcolm Gladwell
And the first thing my mother did when I asked for maternal reassurance was, remind me of an expression from her native Jamaica. This is my mom's first solo appearance on Revisionist History, by the way. What kind of son makes his mother wait eight years for a cameo?
I want to go back over the pronunciation of the words in dialect, pronounce them and then spell them out for me just so I can see in my mind. Okay, the expression,
Joyce Gladwell
Tek spoil. T-E-K.
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah.
Joyce Gladwell
It's a version of take. Yeah, take what is spoiled because we do not use the rounded vowels in Jamaica. They're all broad a vowels. We, instead of saying spoil, we say spoil.
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah.
Joyce Gladwell
But they're all English words. Take spoil, make style. Those are four English words, but they're just pronounced differently.
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah, it's beautifully economical.
Joyce Gladwell
Exactly that. It's the economy and also the humor, which is also striking.
Malcolm Gladwell
Put it in a sentence, in your best Jamaican dialect.
Joyce Gladwell
We don't use it in a sentence.
Malcolm Gladwell
Okay?
Joyce Gladwell
You use it as a commentary on a situation.
Malcolm Gladwell
All right?
Joyce Gladwell
Here is someone walking along in a dress that does not fit with what is commonly being used. And she says, "Well, me dear, you watch and see. Everybody will be wearing a dress like this soon, me tek spoil, mek style."
Malcolm Gladwell
This was her moral instruction to me in typically elliptical, Joyce Gladwell fashion. Take lemons and make lemonade, take spoil and make style. So what did I do? I went straight to the top. I got in touch with the local legend of New York debating KM DiColandrea, aka DiCo. Founder of the Brooklyn Debate League. I told DiCo about the very public undressing I had suffered on the stage of Roy Thomson Hall. And DiCo said, you need to come to Brooklyn. And so I did. All the way to the Crown Heights neighborhood in what used to be the old Hebrew hospital. Narrow hallway, cats, everyone eating big bowls of pasta. Franklin Avenue shuttle lumbering along in the background.
DiCo
What's up, George? [cat meows] No. You can't do that during the podcast, bud.
Malcolm Gladwell
DiCo had put together a dream team of three to analyze my performance. Sasan Kasravi, Jonathan Conyers and DiCo himself. Jonathan is built like a linebacker. Big James Harden beard. Works as a respiratory therapist when he is not writing books and teaching debate. Sasan is 30-something, extroverted, charismatic. In the John Grisham version of his life, he would be a trial lawyer who would win a 10 billion verdict from the jury in Mississippi. DiCo is reserved, studied philosophy at Yale, Irish and Italian in background, and somewhere along the line converted to Judaism and went to rabbinical school. I sat down at DiCo's kitchen table. Each of the three had pages of densely written notes in front of them. They had prepared. Jonathan was to my left. I started with him.
Jonathan, can you speak to the, was the tone different from the debates you're used to with students?
Jonathan Conyers
So that's a very good question. So I'll answer this in two ways. The tone that you had throughout the debate was very similar to some of the students that I do work with, and that's what I teach them not to do.
Malcolm Gladwell
I have the thickest skin in the world. I want just pile on
Oh, they piled on. Sasan was next.
Sasan Kasravi
And I think what I want to explore is the sort of disconnect between the things that you thought should have mattered to the audience and what actually turned out to matter to the audience.
Malcolm Gladwell
Then DiCo.
DiCo
What was your strategy? Why do you think you won? Like, if you talked us through your offense on that debate, why do you think you won?
Malcolm Gladwell
I thought that, I mean, it was, to be honest, began it with a certain degree of arrogance that I thought. I just couldn't imagine how anyone could legitimately argue that the mainstream media was worse than the alternative.
Oh boy. Let's start there. If I assume that most people were on my side before I began, then why was I even debating? Debating is persuasion. It's based on the idea that there are people listening who don't agree with you and your job is to change their mind. It's not a conversation. It's not you say what you think, I say what I think. It's a contest adjudicated by a third party, and the winner is the person who does the best job of climbing inside the head of that third party.
Sasan Kasravi
Because ultimately the win condition of debate is the judge circling your name.
Malcolm Gladwell
Sasan was the first to respond.
Sasan Kasravi
Ultimately, it's figuring out what's important to that person and how do I show them that this thing that I'm advocating for functions under a value system that they hold. I think that's important about debate and what I'm saying,
Jonathan Conyers
It's an empathetic, it's an intellectual exercise in empathy.
Malcolm Gladwell
Empathy. I just failed the first test of debating. I should have put myself inside the heads of those in the audience who didn't trust the mainstream media and then try and bring them around. Second related point, if you watch the whole 90 minute debate on YouTube, which for the love of God, I dearly hope you do not, you will notice that Mr. Murray and I did not get along. At a few points, I called him Doug, to which he took great offense and called me Malc.
Douglas Murray
Well, Malc, I'm going to try to take this more seriously than you did in your endless creation of straw men, which just is ceaseless this evening.
Malcolm Gladwell
After the debate was over, Murray tweeted and retweeted word of his victory 14 times. He's that kind of guy, but my advisors at the Brooklyn Debate League were not happy about my antipathy towards Mr. Murray. If reading the mind of the judge requires empathy, then how is pursuing some personal vendetta going to help matters? How do you engage in the delicate art of persuasion if you're getting all emotional? I tried to explain.
I didn't know Douglas Murray much at all, so I did a little research into Douglas Murray, and it turns out that Douglas Murray without meaning, I'm not intending to demean him, but he's someone, he's one of those English people, white English people who objects to the number of non-white people who have moved to England in the last 50 years.
I'm actually not exaggerating here. Let me read to you from a speech Murray once gave.
It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time bomb, which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop in the case of a further genocide such as that in the Balkans sanctuary would be given on a strictly temporary basis. This should also be enacted retrospectively. Those who are currently in Europe having fled tyranny should be persuaded back to the countries which they fled from once the tyrannies that were the cause of their flight have been removed.
That last sentence from Murray is what throws me. Immigrants from certain places should be persuaded back to the countries from which they fled.
In fact, there's a whole thing he does with on Andrew Sullivan's podcast where he talks about his dismay that there are many cities in England now where whites are in the minority. Now, my mother happens to be one of those people who was a black woman who immigrated to England in 1963 or whatever, 62. So she, she's talk, oh, she in the fifties, he's talking about my, so he's talking about my mother, right? So this is, it was, it's street for me. It's like that dude is dude did is one of the... People used to shout the N word at my mom when she walked down the street in England in 1950, whatever, and I'm, in my mind, I'm imagining he's one of those people, right? So it's like that's what was happening when I was getting riled up. I was like, I walked in thinking he's a piece of shit. And I realize now, you can't do that.
If you do that, you've lost before you've even started. This is why in high school debate, you have to prepare both sides beforehand and you find out whether you are for or against the resolution on the day of the debate. They don't want you to be yourself.
Jonathan Conyers
And again, like DiCo could attest to this more than anybody. DiCo has had students whose parents have just been deported or on the verge of being deported and didn't have to go and speak about open borders and immigration and don't know which side of the fence they have to debate on. That is tough for 14, 15 year olds who after they give a speech, have to go cry because they miss their dad or mama. They don't know if ICE is coming or I can't do this, I can't do that. I get it. I have been there. There were times where I felt racism occurring or people told me, you can't use your personal story. That's not fair. This rich kid don't understand what it's like to be poor. So don't talk about that. So it happens. We have to come in and understand that debates are not personal and we have to talk about these topics because if we can't have dialogue, if we can't have respect, then all is lost. So I'm going to challenge you, Malcolm, to say if they can control their composure, if they can understand that, we can have real conversations, so can you.
Malcolm Gladwell
Our culture tells us to be authentic and put our feelings first. But if you're trying to win a debate, your focus needs to be on your opponent's feelings, how their mind works. Lesson number one, don't be yourself. It's a dead end.
Okay, second lesson. All of my advisors at the Brooklyn Debate League were baffled by a crucial moment early in the debate, this moment in particular.
Douglas Murray
And nobody is saying that the non-mainstream media don't have frailties. Of course they do. The simple proposal in front of the audience tonight is whether or not you can trust the mainstream media. That is that you don't need anything else. You don't need any other information from elsewhere. You can just turn on CBC in the evening and you know you've got your stuff. You can pick up the New York Times, the Washington Post in the morning, and you know that there's no spin on the story. It's absolutely accurate reporting.
Malcolm Gladwell
The debate connoisseur in Sasan loved this little move. What Murray was saying was that if you have even the slightest doubt about the perfection of the mainstream media, then you have to vote for his side and no institution can meet that standard. It's like saying, unless all prescription drugs are guaranteed to act perfectly every time without side effects or complications, you can't trust prescription drugs. It's nuts.
Sasan Kasravi
They took this topic, don't trust mainstream media, and made the central question of the debate be, are there political biases in mainstream media? As long as that's the question that the audience is asking themselves to make the winner, you lose.
Malcolm Gladwell
What my side should have said was, wait a minute. The way you guys are defining the resolution makes no sense. Sasan said that then I'd be free to offer a simple alternative, something like-
Sasan Kasravi
In a scenario where a non-mainstream news source and a mainstream news source directly disagree with each other, and we have no way of discerning who's right based on what we have available to us. Who should we give the benefit of the doubt to? I think that leans a lot more your way.
Malcolm Gladwell
But we didn't say that. We sat there and let our opponents stack the deck against us. Why? DiCo had a hunch.
DiCo
Did you write down any notes while your opponents were speaking? What were you doing?
Malcolm Gladwell
Well, that was so I was scribbling furiously. I was the only one who was, but I realized-
DiCo
What they were saying or what you were thinking?
Malcolm Gladwell
Both. But I realized it inhibited my ability to listen to them. So I was so busy, I was trying to conceive of what I would, how I'd respond in the moment. So while I was doing that, I was missing what the next part, the next thing that they were saying. Do you know what I mean?
DiCo also picked up on what led to my most embarrassing moment in the whole debate. The Walter Cronkite thing? Ay yai yai. Cronkite was, as I'm sure you know, the legendary CBS news anchor and wartime correspondent who for decades stood for all that was dignified and trustworthy in American journalism. Matt Taibbi brought him up in his opening statement
Matt Taibbi
Once the commercial strategy of the news business was to go for the whole audience, a TV news broadcast was aired at dinnertime, and it was designed to be watched by the entire family, everyone from your crazy right wing uncle to the sulking lefty teenager in the corner. This system had flaws, but making an effort to talk to everybody had benefits. For one thing, it inspired trust. Gallup polls twice, twice showed Walter Cronkite to be the most trusted person in all of America. That would never happen with a news reader today. With the arrival of the internet, some outlets found that instead of going after the whole audience, it made more financial sense to pick one demographic and try to dominate it. How do you do that? That's easy. You just pick an audience and feed it news you know they'll like. Instead of starting with a story and following the facts, you start with what pleases your audience and work backward to the story.
Malcolm Gladwell
Back when we had Cronkite, the system worked.
I heard that and I thought, give me an effing break. So when it was my turn, I responded. I was greatly amused by the affection Matt Taibbi has for the age of Walter Cronkite, which he seemed to hold up as a kind of golden moment. In that moment, the mainstream media was populated entirely by white men from elite schools. Why you would've had such affection and say, that's the gold standard, and we should trust the mainstream media precisely at the moment when the mainstream media is least representative is really puzzling the me. Then Douglas Murray chimed in, of course.
Douglas Murray
Malcolm, you did a little nasty jab there by trying to pretend that Matt Taibbi is desperate for the era of white men in broadcasting. Takes a certain chutzpah to make that claim.
Malcolm Gladwell
Taibbi then defended himself.
Matt Taibbi
And yes, as I said when I, in my speech, the old system under Walter Cronkite had its flaws, but it did have its advantages as well. The making the effort to talk to everybody garnered more trust in the public. There is a reason why people trusted news people more 20 or 30 or 40 years ago than they do now.
Malcolm Gladwell
And once again, I got irritated this time with that phrase, making the effort to talk to everyone.
I just wanted to make a short list of the people who were not spoken to by journalists in the 1950s and sixties. And you may want to add some, if I missed some. Black people or women, poor people, gay people, people with mildly left wing views. I mean, words fail me when somebody it presented with a critique of his rather idiosyncratic position on Walter Cronkite comes back and says, oh, no, no, no. There's more to my great love of this man.
So I'm on my high horse waving my woke flag, standing up for inclusion. But wait, first, back to lesson one, don't be myself. It's not smart, but that's not even the worst of it.
DiCo
Do you remember the context in which Matt brought that comment up in his opening?
Malcolm Gladwell
It was, he was, was he talking about how that was an exam the way it was back then was worthy of our trust, and it's not like that anymore.
DiCo
Do you remember why? What he was saying in his opening was not, I am lifting up the 1950s as the golden standard of media and Walter Cro-, blah blah. Yes, that sentence came out of his mouth, but that's not what he was saying. What he was saying was, look to the 1950s. Look to the past. When you had a whole family gathered around the TV watching one show, that show had to talk to all of the people in that room, to the parents, to the kids, to the grandparents, even if they had different interests, different political ideologies, whatever that one show had to talk to a diverse audience. It could not have an agenda in the same way that it does today, because today it's not talking to a whole family. It's not even talking to a whole neighborhood or a whole household. We all have our individual echo chambers that we lean really hard into, right? What he brought up about Walter Cronkite in about the 1950s was just a detail.
Malcolm Gladwell
Oh, I see. DiCo's point was that the people in the audience, the judges surely understood what Taibbi was saying, but I didn't.
DiCo
The main point there was totally ignored, and it was a really important point for the offense. Cause their whole argument was, you can't trust mainstream media because there are agendas, because they're not trying to give you the truth. They're trying to give you the spin and the story and cater to a, they called it demographic hunting, I think, right? That they're catering to a specific demographic.
Malcolm Gladwell
The Cronkite bit was a provocation waved in front of Malcolm Gladwell that sent him charging off in the wrong direction.
DiCo
It was like a distractor thrown in there, but that worked and you got totally distracted and went down this whole rabbit hole and missed that bigger picture. Yeah.
Malcolm Gladwell
Wait, did I do anything well?
No, not really. Remember what Douglas Murray said?
Douglas Murray
It's so strange hearing you debate Malcolm because you listen to nothing that your opponents say.
Malcolm Gladwell
Turns out he was right, and that was when DiCo told me I had to come to Brooklyn again for listening lessons. I met with the debate league at Unity Prep, a charter high school in Williamsburg. I sat myself down in a high school classroom for the first time since the late 1970s. DiCo, Jonathan and Sasan were all there along with a dozen or so high school debaters. There was a step class in the adjoining room. I was a long way from Roy Thomson Hall.
Jonathan Conyers
You ready?
Student 1
Yes, sir.
Jonathan Conyers
All right. Open forum. Look up. Being able to listen is the most important skill a debater should have. All right, stand up. You know the routine. If you agree, you on this side. If you disagree, you're on that side. Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Malcolm Gladwell
Jonathan kicked things off with a warmup exercise, open forum, A mini debate on the question of the day. What's more important to a debater, being a good listener or a good talker?
Student 1
Wait, which side is agree?
Jonathan Conyers
Agree is always over here. Disagree is always over there. [crosstalk] Being able to listen, I'm so sorry. Being able to listen is the most important skill a debater could have. Being able to listen is the most important skill a debater could have.
Jade
Being able to listen is one of the most important skills for debating because the way people read their contentions and their subpoints, you wouldn't be able to gain, gain and obtain as much information as you can to put down in your flow chart. Because debating is not only about using information that gets information, but it's also about obtaining. It's also about obtaining something and understanding that in order to use information to fight it.
Student 2
I mean, I do, well - I do agree with what you said. I just feel like you can be a good listener. But what it really takes is when you have confidence and you basically pretend like you know your stuff.
Student 3
But you also said you have to listen to your opponent. So that's also a very important skill to listen to your opponent because if you don't listen to it and you just jotting stuff down, you might say the wrong thing or write down the wrong thing as to what your opponent is saying. So I'm saying that listening is more important because as my other teammate said, Jade, she also referred to how they read their contentions or their subpoints. They read fast, and if you can't catch those points, then you're not going to know what you got to write or what you got to focus on.
Jade
Can I say something real quick? Yes. I got something for all the offense.
Jonathan Conyers
90 seconds, 90 seconds, 90 seconds.
Jade
Even though they're all accurate, [redacted] to start with what you said, you need to write in order to, you need to write in order to listen, but it is true. That is true, but listening is a prerequisite to writing because you can write a whole bunch of nonsense. But what if you don't have the right accurate information? You didn't listen to the right number, you didn't listen to the right statistics. Then what is your writing have to do with anything? I can sit there and draw a fairy, but that don't, that's not going to make my argument any better unless you listen. You need to-
Malcolm Gladwell
Then the hard part began.
Sasan Kasravi
What is this thing? This wasn't- [crosstalk]
Malcolm Gladwell
Sasan was standing at the front of the room. He told us he would simulate a debate. Our job was to keep track of every argument he made in the debate world. This is called flowing. Sasan said he would try and make it easier on us.
Sasan Kasravi
So we're going to do a game.
Malcolm Gladwell
With playing cards
Sasan Kasravi
Where I am going to say the name of a card in a deck of cards and you are going to flow it like it's a speech. So you're going to make a column. So if you have a sheet of paper and we have notebooks for you, you're going to want five columns. And in this first column, top to bottom, you are going to write the cards that I'm going to say out loud. You're going to want to listen carefully because I'm not going to repeat anything. The test is to see whether you're going to be able to write it all down without missing anything.
Malcolm Gladwell
Now, if you think this sounds like a silly exercise, I encourage you to pause this podcast, get a pen and paper and try for yourself. Ready?
Sasan Kasravi
Hello, my name is Sasan and I'll be speaking on the affirmative today. My first argument is the three of hearts, and we know that's true because of the four of diamonds. You can't forget about the Jack of spades. You know, a lot of people tell me 10 of diamonds. But what those people don't realize is first off ace of hearts. Secondly, the six of clubs and finally the nine of spades. That's it. That's the speech. So you should have these written down. Okay, great. Now we're going to do the negative speech.
DiCo
Check your negative pen.
Sasan Kasravi
Switch pen colors. All right, I'm the negative and I disagree with everything that guy said. He says three of hearts more like the seven of diamonds. People like to talk about jack of spades, but what they don't realize is king of hearts. 10 of diamonds is okay, if you don't remember that, the ace of spades is there. And as far as the ace of hearts goes, more like the two of hearts. Finally, they brought up the nine of spades, nine of spades, nine of seriously, because have you never heard of the queen of clubs?
That's my whole speech and I'm maybe unnecessarily aggressive here.
Malcolm Gladwell
How did I do? I was terrible. I could keep up for the first minute or so. Then I fell behind. I missed things. Sasan gets up and talks about playing cards and I can't keep up
I got lost.
Jonathan Conyers
One second coach, I have a question for you. Is this hard?
Sasan Kasravi
Oh yeah.
Jonathan Conyers
DiCo, I have a question for you. Is this hard?
DiCo
Really hard?
Jonathan Conyers
This is really hard and you guys are doing amazing. I see it all over your face. This is frustrating. You don't supposed to be an expert. I don't even know what he said half the time, and I've been doing this for a long time. All right.
Malcolm Gladwell
This is what happened to me during the Munk Debate. I was taking notes, but I didn't know how to take notes. So when Murray twisted the terms of the debate, I just missed it. And when Taibbi made that reference to Walter Cronkite, I heard the name Cronkite, but I missed the context. Am I making excuses for myself? Of course I am. But what debate tells us is that the failure to listen is not a failure of will or motivation or character. That's what we assume when there's some breakdown in communication. If someone doesn't listen, we assume they don't want to listen. We hear the yelling and screaming on the internet and we see it as evidence of some great flaw in our society. But maybe at least some of the time, the person who doesn't listen acts that way because they don't know how to listen. They haven't practiced, they don't know where to start. Listening is a skill like playing the piano or learning to cook. I asked Sasan, how long would it take me to listen the way he does to learn how to flow?
Sasan Kasravi
I think if you really focus on it a school year, I think to be really comfortable with it, probably like two school years.
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah.
Sasan Kasravi
Yeah. And that's half of your college competitive career. That's half of your high school competitive career.
Malcolm Gladwell
A long time. But imagine if we did it, if we all went to debate school, learn those lessons, we're able to say to ourselves in the middle of a heated argument, this isn't about me. Learned how to avoid Walter Cronkite sized rabbit holes. Understood that debating is not the art of talking, it's the art of listening. Oh, and maybe the most important lesson of all, do you know what they teach you to do at the Brooklyn Debate League? After the debate is over, after one side has lost and the other has won?
Jonathan Conyers
All right. You guys know the culture. Tell each other, compliment, why we love each other. Go. All right, go compliment who, shout out, shout out. Shout out.
Malcolm Gladwell
And all around the room, the debaters shattered out happily to each other.
Jade
I like the idea of how you just look to the attitude because attitude is right, and that one word believe is a really strong word to use, which gave you such good leeway into my argument.
Student 2
And I love how you be coming in with your presence. You're going to clear, so then it amps me up. When you have that attitude, it amps me up and it makes me want to clear too. So I like that.
Malcolm Gladwell
Matt and Doug, my Munk Debate antagonists, I appreciate you for forcing me to take what was spoiled and give it new life.
Now, one last question. So I approached you with this because as I said, I had this disastrous experience with the Munk Debate. So I wanted to use this opportunity to learn to be a better debater. Do you think this is typical of me that I would, am I a take spoil, make style kind of person in your mind?
Joyce Gladwell
You are such a highly successful person that one would not associate with you many occasions in which you needed to do that.
Malcolm Gladwell
That's just a mother speaking.
Joyce Gladwell
But the fact that you- I beg your pardon?
Malcolm Gladwell
I said that's just a mother speaking. You will not admit to any frailty on the part of your sons.
Joyce Gladwell
No, no. Not only that. I'm not aware of them, but so much. But the fact that you have risen above in this remarkable way, justifies my faith in you and my confidence in you.
Malcolm Gladwell
Aw. That's what I meant by maternal reassurance.
Revisionist History is produced by Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, Lee Mengistu, Kiarra Powell and Jacob Smith. Fact checking by Keishel Williams and Tali Emlen. We are edited by Julia Barton and Peter Clowney. Original scoring by Luis Guerra, mastering by Sarah Brugeire and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Twitter taunting by Nina Lawrence, Lee Mengistu, Justin Richmond, Ben Tolliday, Emily Vaughn and David Zha. Special thanks to the Unity Preparatory Charter School and the Brooklyn Debate League. If you're curious about the league and the fantastic coaches behind it, keep an eye out for Jonathan Conyers's forthcoming memoir, I Wasn't Supposed to Be Here, out this September. Jonathan has incredible stories to tell.
Most of all, special thanks to my mom, Joyce Gladwell. I'm her son.
The Host
