Do you remember how Andy Rooney used to open his 60 Minutes commentaries with, “Did you ever wonder…..?”
In Malcom Gladwell’s most recent book, he chases down a number of surprising trends. For example, why heart treatment is so different in Buffalo, New York compared to Boulder, Colorado. Why there were a crazy number of bank robberies during the 1980s in Los Angeles. Or, why Medicare fraud ran rampant in Miami and the bad guys there were raking in billions in broad daylight. Also, why a particular school in California had extremely low rates of students who received their childhood vaccinations. (And you’ll hear a parent rationalize the illness that resulted.)
Gladwell does the deep dive into these numerical anomalies and a host of others.
Gladwell has a breezy, conversational writing style that has the reader considering things that would not usually get thought of let alone understood. I appreciate that he makes my brain down shift into Daniel Kahneman’s system II mode of thinking. Reading Gladwell is like going to a brain gym.
We are bombarded with too much data to stop and consider much of it these days. This has to explain some of the appeal of a national candidate who speaks at a third grade level. It’s good to be reminded that—most all the time—there’s more to the story.