Outliers – The Story of Success

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell asks what sets high achievers apart, and the answers go beyond hard work. This episode explores how culture, timing, and opportunity shape success more than we think.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome, curious minds, to another deep dive.
Today, we're digging into something huge, a belief most of
us probably hold about success. Right.
The idea that it's, you know, all about individual talent,
hard work, maybe ambition. Exactly that lone genius, the
self-made person pulling themselves up by their
bootstraps. We love those stories.

(00:21):
We really do. They're compelling, yeah, But
what if they're not the whole story?
What if that's just incomplete? That's the big question, isn't
it? What if the real way people
achieve, like truly extraordinary things, is way
more complex, maybe more interconnected than we think?
And honestly, it may be a lot more surprising.
That's precisely the territory Malcolm Gladwell explores in his

(00:44):
book Outliers, The Story of Success.
It's fascinating stuff. Yeah, I found it really eye
opening. He basically argues that if we
really want to get why some people reach these incredible
heights, we need to shift our focus completely.
Instead of just looking at the person you know who they are, we
need to look at where they come from.
OK, their background. Yeah.
And when they were born, believeit or not, their cultural

(01:04):
heritage, the family they grew up in, and maybe most
importantly, the extraordinary opportunities that just, well,
fell into their lap sometimes, often unseen stuff.
Right, the hidden advantages. So it's a total reframe of what
makes someone an outlier. Exactly.
It's less about the individual in isolation and more about the
ecosystem around them. OK, so that's our mission today.

(01:26):
We're going to try and pull backthe curtain on these hidden
drivers of success. We'll unpack some of these
surprising connections Gladwell makes.
Uncover those subtle advantages,the incredible opportunities.
Think The Beatles, Bill Gates, even top New York lawyers.
What links them beyond just, youknow, raw talent?
Turns out quite a lot actually. I think you're going to have

(01:46):
some real aha moments listening to this.
It definitely changed how I think about success and maybe,
just maybe, how you think about your own path to.
Ready to jump in? Let's.
Do it. So Gladwell kicks things off
with the story that's almost well, it's hard to believe at
first. He takes us to the small town in
eastern Pennsylvania, Rosetto. Rosetto, Pennsylvania, Yeah,

(02:08):
founded way back late 19th century by Italian immigrants,
specifically from one town in Italy, Rosetto, Valfortore.
So a really tight knit communityfrom the start.
Very. And for decades, this little
American town held this incredible secret, a medical
mystery really that baffled researchers for years, which
was, get this, an astonishingly low rate of hurt disease among

(02:32):
the people living there. Like unbelievably low.
Lower than average. Dramatically lower compared to
surrounding towns, compared to the national average.
It was just off the charts healthy in that specific way.
So this physician, Dr. Stuart Wolf, heard about it, and
frankly, he didn't believe it atfirst, thought it was just, you
know, anecdotal. Makes sense, sounds too good to

(02:53):
be true. Right.
But some local doctors kept at him, convinced him to actually
go and investigate, and what he found just flew in the face of
all the conventional medical wisdom of the time.
He must have been scratching hishead.
What did he think was going on initially?
Well, the obvious stuff first Diet, right?
Italian immigrants, you immediately think healthy
Mediterranean diet, olive oil, fresh vegetables.

(03:15):
Yeah, the classic heart healthy stuff.
But no, turns out the rositins in Pennsylvania weren't eating
like that at all. They'd adopted American habits,
but maybe worse. They were cooking with lard, not
olive oil. Lard OK, Definitely not
Mediterranean. And their pizza back in Italy
may be simple here. Loaded sausage, pepperoni,

(03:35):
salami, ham, eggs even. Eggs on pizza.
And sweets, which were like a special occasion thing back
home, Christmas, Easter, now everyday treats.
Dietitians look at it and something like 41% of their
calories came from fat. 41% that's that's not a recipe for
low heart disease. It sounds more like the
opposite. It was a real head scratcher.
So diet was out? What about exercise?

(03:57):
Maybe they were super active. Makes sense.
Maybe working hard physical labor?
Nope, not really. Many of them smoked heavily.
A lot struggled with obesity. They weren't, you know, running
marathons or anything. So exercise wasn't the answer
either. OK, so not diet, not exercise.
What's next? Genetics.
They all came from the same region in Italy.
Good thought. That's what Wolf looked at next.

(04:18):
Maybe they were just, you know, genetically tough, hearty stock.
A super gene for heart health. Could be.
So he tracked down relatives of the Rostens, people who had
moved away, living elsewhere in the US.
Did they have the same low heartdisease rates?
They did not. They had heart disease rates
pretty much like other Americans, so it wasn't some
specific Rosen gene protecting them.

(04:38):
Wow, so diet, exercise, geneticsall debunked.
What else is there? The place itself?
Something in the water. Right.
Maybe the environment, Eastern Pennsylvania, specific air
quality, water geography. Possible I guess.
But then they looked at the nearby towns.
Bangor, Nazareth. Similar size, similar

(05:00):
populations, lots hard work and European immigrants.
Similar access to doctors and hospitals.
And their heart disease rates. Three times higher than Rosetto
for men over 65. Three times.
Whoa. OK, so it's definitely not the
location either. This is a real mystery.
What was it then? This is where it gets really
interesting. Wolf teamed up with a
sociologist, John Brune, and they realized the secret wasn't

(05:21):
something in Rosetto like the water or the jeans.
The secret was rosetto the community itself.
The social structure. Exactly.
The way they lived was completely different.
Think about it, People were constantly visiting each other's
houses, stopping to chat on the street in Italian, cooking for
each other all the time. Real close connection.

(05:43):
Super close extended families often live together like 3
generations under one roof. Huge respect for the elders.
The church Our Lady of Mount Carmel was a massive unifying
force. Community Hub.
Totally. And get this, in a town of just
under 2000 people, they had 22 different civic organizations,
clubs, groups, incredible socialdensity. 22 That's a lot.

(06:06):
Everyone must have known everyone.
Pretty much. And maybe the most crucial part,
they had this really strong egalitarian ethos, like a deep
seated belief in equality. How did that play out?
Well, the wealthy didn't flaunt it.
Bought a fancy new car? Maybe you parked it where it
wasn't too obvious. Built a new house, maybe on the
edge of town, not right in the middle showing off.

(06:27):
Interesting, discouraging displays of wealth.
Yeah, and conversely, the community work to help people
who are struggling, to help themhide their failures, basically
preserve their dignity. It wasn't about individual
success at all costs. It was about the collective.
The social fabric was incrediblystrong.
So Gladwell paints this picture of Roseto being like like a

(06:49):
protective bubble, a social immune system.
That's a great way to put it. All that connection, the
respect, the shared purpose, thelack of social pressure to keep
up with the Joneses. It buffered them, buffered them
from the stresses of modern American life.
Stresses that, Gladwell argues contribute to heart disease.
Exactly. The isolation, the
individualism, the constant pressure was that has seemed

(07:09):
immune to that. Their social cohesion acted like
a health shield, emotionally andphysically, like being
inoculated against loneliness and stress.
It's pretty profound when you think about it that way.
It really is, and it immediatelymakes you question that whole
pull yourself up by your bootstraps idea.
Doesn't. It totally it suggests our
environment, our community, our connections.

(07:30):
They matter way more for our well-being and maybe our success
than we usually admit. It shifts the focus.
It's not just about individual choices or willpower.
It's about the invisible power of belonging.
Makes you wonder about our modern world much more isolated.
Yeah, definitely. Food for thought.
OK, so from that warm, connectedcommunity, Gladwell pivots to

(07:52):
something completely different. The cold, hard world of Canadian
hockey. Ice hockey, yeah.
And when you think about elite sports, you usually think
meritocracy, right? The best rise to the top?
Absolutely. Talent, dedication.
The cream rises. Thousands of kids start playing.
The system sorts them out, picksthe best for the top leagues
like Major Junior A. Seems totally fair.

(08:13):
Let's fair on the surface. But then researchers dug into
the birth dates of the players who actually made it to those
elite levels, and they found this really weird, statistically
massive pattern. An overwhelming majority of the
top players were born in the first few months of the year,
January, February, March. Wait, seriously?
Like astrological signs determining hockey talent.

(08:36):
It almost looks like that. If you look at a roster for a
top Canadian junior team, it's packed with kids born early in
the year. It feels completely arbitrary,
but the numbers don't lie. That's bizarre.
So you're saying the best players are mostly Capricorns
and Aquarius as it sounds ridiculous?
It does sound ridiculous, but it's so consistent.
Like Gladwell jokes, you could almost hear an announcer passes

(08:56):
from January 4th over to March 11th.
He shoots. He scores.
It demands an explanation. OK, OK.
There has to be 1. What is it?
Is there something special aboutbeing born in winter in Canada?
Nothing mystical about it thankfully.
The explanation is actually super simple and it has
everything to do with bureaucracy, not biology.
The cut off date for age class hockey eligibility in Canada is

(09:19):
January 1st. January 1st OK, So what does
that mean practically? It means a kid who turns say 10
years old on January 2nd could be playing in the same league on
the same team even as a a kid who doesn't turn 10 until
December 31st of that same year.So you have kids who are almost
a full year older playing against kids who are much

(09:39):
younger relatively speed. Exactly.
And when you're 9 or 10 years old, a 12 month age gap is huge.
It means significant differencesin physical size, coordination,
strength, overall maturity. Right.
Think about the difference between a nine year old and a 10
year old. It's a massive developmental
leap at that age. A world of difference.
And this is where the bias creeps in, completely

(10:01):
unintentionally. How so?
Coaches, when they're selecting kids for the All Star teams, the
Rep squads, who do they pick? They naturally gravitate towards
the kids who look more talented right now.
Which are the bigger, stronger and more coordinated kids?
Which just happened to be the slightly older kids born closer
to the January 1st cut off. They look like better players at
that specific moment because they're more physically

(10:22):
developed. So it's not necessarily innate
talent, it's just maturity advantage at that specific
selection point, like picking the ripest apples first.
Precisely. And this kicks off what
sociologist Robert Merton calledthe Matthew Effect.
Or you could call it a self fulfilling prophecy.
The Matthew effect like to thosewho have more will be given.

(10:42):
That's the one. The system starts by
misidentifying talent, mistakingmaturity for ability.
But then those kids who get selected get all the advantages
better. Coaching.
Way better coaching, more ice time like hours and hours, more
practice, more games against better competition, more
encouragement. So that initial small, almost

(11:02):
accidental advantage just gets bigger and bigger over time.
It compounds year after year, soeventually those kids do become
the best players, not because they were born better, but
because they were given a superior developmental
experience. Based on that initial arbitrary
age difference, the false definition becomes true.
So the system itself creates thestars it thinks it's just

(11:24):
identifying. Largely, yes.
And this isn't just a Canadian hockey quirk.
Gladwell shows this pattern repeating everywhere.
Like where else? European soccer, same deal, but
the pattern shifts depending on the cut off date.
In England the cut off is September 1st.
Guess when most Premier League players are born?
September. October.
November. Bingo, disproportionately so.

(11:47):
International junior soccer usedto have an August 1st cut off.
Same pattern. Then they changed it to January
1st. And suddenly more players were
born early in the year. You got it.
He mentions A Czech junior national team roster where
almost no one was born in the second-half of the year after
the cut off change to Jan 1st. It's systematic.
It really is like a lottery based on your birthday.

(12:07):
And it happens in schools too, right?
Not just sports. Absolutely.
Think about academic gifted programs.
Research like this study by economist Kelly Bedard and
Elizabeth Dewey looked at international test scores.
They found that the oldest kids in a grade, those born closest
to the school cut off date, consistently scores
significantly higher than the youngest kids, like 4 to 12

(12:30):
percentile points higher. And does that advantage fade
over time? You'd think so, but often it
doesn't. Because just like the hockey
coaches, teachers can sometimes mistake maturity for innate
ability in those early grades. So the older, more mature kids
get picked for the advanced reading groups or math tracks.
Exactly. And then they get better
instruction, learn more advancedskills, and the gap actually

(12:52):
widens. It perpetuates itself.
Unless you do something about itlike in Denmark.
Right. Denmark has this interesting
national policy where they don'tdo ability grouping until kids
are older. Around age 10.
They basically let everyone catch up maturity wise before
making those critical sorting decisions.
It tries to level the playing field.
That makes so much sense becausethe real take away here, the

(13:14):
sort of sad part, is how much talent we must be wasting.
Gladwell argues these systems are incredibly inefficient.
By picking winners so early based on an arbitrary factor
like birth month, we're essentially writing off huge
numbers of kids who might have had great potential if they'd
just been given the same opportunities later on.
Think of all the potentially great hockey players, soccer

(13:38):
players, scientists, artists whojust got discouraged or
overlooked because they were born in the wrong month.
It's staggering when you think about it.
It really makes you question howmuch of our own path, the
opportunities we got or didn't get might have been shaped by
these invisible structural factors like her birth date.
Things that feel like personal choices might have been subtly

(13:58):
influenced from the start. OK, so we have community as a
shield, birth dates, creating opportunity.
Now let's talk about mastery itself.
That idea of incredible skill, like a virtuoso musician or a
coding genius. We tend to think they're just
naturals, right? Born with it.
That's the common perception. Just raw innate talent.
But Gladwell introduces this concept that really challenges

(14:21):
that the 10,000 hour rule. The magic number for expertise?
Where does that come from? It's largely based on research
by psychologist Kay Anders Ericsson.
He did this fascinating study back in the 90s at a top music
Academy in Berlin. Studied violinists.
What did he look at? He divided them into three
groups, the real stars, the onesexpected to be international

(14:42):
soloists, a group of just good players, and a third group who
are likely going to end up as music teachers.
OK, different levels of skill, right?
And he asked them all one simplequestion.
Over your entire life, since youfirst picked up the violin, how
many hours have you practiced? And what did he find?
Was it all over the place? Amazingly consistent.
Everyone started around the sameage, like 5 years old.

(15:04):
Practice similar amounts for thefirst few years, but then around
age 8 a difference started to emerge.
The future stars started practicing more.
Significantly more. And that gap just kept widening.
By age 20, the top group, the Stars, had clocked on average
10,000 hours of practice. 10,000hours and the other groups.
The good group had averaged about 8000 hours and the Future

(15:27):
Music teachers around 4000 hours.
Wow, a direct correlation between hours practiced and
level of achievement. Exactly.
And here's the kicker, Erickson couldn't find any naturals
people who made it to the top tier with way less practice, nor
could he find any grinds, peoplewho practice more than 10,000
hours but didn't have the talentto make it to the elite level.

(15:49):
So once you had enough basic talent to get into the school in
the first place. The only thing that separated
the best from the rest was how much harder and how much more
deliberately they practiced. 10,000 hours.
Is that number specific to violinists?
Apparently not, neuroscientist Daniel Leviton points out.
This number, 10,000 hours, seemsto be a consistent marker for

(16:10):
world class expertise across a huge range of fields.
Composers, basketball players, writers, pianists, chess
masters, even master criminals. Apparently it takes about that
long to achieve true mastery andcomplex tasks.
So practice isn't just somethingyou do once you're good.
It's what makes you good. It fundamentally reframes
genius. Even Mozart, the ultimate

(16:31):
prodigy. His earliest works aren't
considered his masterpieces. His truly great composition
started flowing after he put in years and years, likely getting
close to or past that 10,000 hour mark through relentless
composing and performing. OK, so if achieving mastery
takes this incredible amount of time, 10,000 hours of focused
effort, the obvious next question is where the heck do

(16:53):
people get that much time? And that's where opportunity
comes crashing back into the picture.
Extraordinary, often lucky opportunity.
Gladwell uses the example of Bill Joy, the computer
programming legend. Co founder of Sun Microsystems,
right? That's him.
In 1971, when he was just 16, hestumbled into the University of
Michigan's computer center. This wasn't just any lab, It was
one of the most advanced in the world at the time.

(17:14):
Mainframes, time sharing stuff most people had never even seen,
and. He just happened to be there.
Pretty much by chance, he wasn'teven there initially for
computer science, but he found himself in one of the few places
on Earth where a teenager could get basically unlimited access
to cutting edge programming tools.
And he took advantage of it. He became obsessed programming

(17:36):
810 hours a day later, Berkeley was even more intense,
programming day and night, literally falling asleep at the
keyboard sometimes. That's dedication, but it was
only possible because the opportunity existed.
Exactly. He couldn't have put in those
thousands of hours without that unique, almost accidental
access. Right place, right time, right
resources. And then there's maybe the most

(17:57):
famous example, Bill Gates, the ultimate self-made tech icon,
The. Classic story, right?
Drops out of Harvard, builds Microsoft from his garage.
But Gladwell digs deeper and it's, well, it's not quite that
simple, is it? Not at all.
It's an incredible sequence of lucky breaks one after another
that allowed him to rack up his 10,000 hours long before

(18:19):
Microsoft is even an idea. Like what kind of breaks?
It starts with his background, right?
Yeah, privileged background, Wealthy, well connected parents.
They send him to Lakeside, an elite private school in Seattle.
Side had something special. In 1968, when Gates was in 8th
grade, Lakeside got an ASR 33 teletype terminal connected to a
mainframe. This was unbelievably advanced

(18:41):
for the time. Most colleges didn't have this
kind of real time interactive access. 8th grade, so he was
programming way earlier than almost anyone else's age.
An unbelievable head start and the opportunities just kept
coming. How so?
First, the school's mother's club paid for the expensive
computer time on the mainframe. OK, that's lucky.
Then, when that money ran out, one of the parents who worked at

(19:03):
the local computer company called C ^3, offered Gates and
his friends free computer time on their machines on weekends in
exchange for testing software. So he got even more time.
Hours and hours programming lateinto the night.
Then that ended. But somehow, Gates finagled
access to computers at the University of Washington between

(19:23):
3:00 AM and 6:00 AM. He'd sneak out of the house
after bedtime, walk or take the bus and code in the dead of
night. His mom apparently wondered why
he was so tired in the mornings.That's insane dedication, but
again relies on access. And it didn't stop there.
Another company, TRW, needed programmers with experience on
specific software. Guess who had that experience?

(19:46):
Kate's and his lakeside buddies from the C ^3 gig.
Exactly. So TRW hired them.
Gates, still in high school, convinced his teachers to let
him go work on this project as an independent study.
He was basically doing high level professional programming
as a senior. So by the time he even got to
Harvard. He'd been programming non-stop
for about 7 years, from 8th grade through high school.

(20:08):
Gladwell calls this period Gates's Hamburg.
Like The Beatles honing their craft, playing endless hours in
German clubs. Gates himself said he was
stunned. If there were even fifty
teenagers in the world who had that kind of early, intensive
experience. He called it an incredibly lucky
series of events. It really dismantles that lone
genius myth. Completely.
The 10,000 hour rule highlights the effort, yes, but it more

(20:32):
powerfully underscores the absolute necessity of
extraordinary opportunity and support systems.
You can't just decide to practice for 10,000 hours if you
don't have the access, the resources, the time freed up
from other obligations. It's not self-made, it's
opportunity enabled. OK, this is fascinating.
Community birth dates, the sheerlook of opportunity allowing for

(20:54):
10,000 hours. But what about raw intelligence?
IQ. Surely that has to be a huge
factor. Like we certainly think it is.
We're obsessed with IQ, Gladwellintroduces Christopher Langan,
the guy often called the smartest man in the world.
IQ literally off the charts too high to measure accurately.
I remember him, he was on that game show.
One versus 100 seemed incrediblybrilliant.

(21:14):
You'd expect someone like that to achieve almost anything.
Absolutely. That's the allure of high IQ,
and it connects to this long history.
Like Louis Turman study back in the 1920s, he followed hundreds
of child geniuses, his termites,all with Iqs over 140.
He thought they were destined tobe the future leaders.
Totally convinced he tracked them obsessively.
Even today companies, especiallyin tech, use brain teasers and

(21:37):
interviews. Like Why are manhole covers
round Trying to find the people with the absolute highest
cognitive horsepower? The assumption is simple.
Higher IQ equals greater success.
It feels intuitive. If someone offered you 30 extra
IQ points, you'd take it, assuming it would guarantee more
success. You probably would, but here's
where Gladwell throws a curveball The IQ threshold

(21:59):
effect. Threshold effect?
What's that? Basically, research shows that
while IQ definitely correlates with success, it only does so up
to a certain point once you reach an IQ of about 120.
Which is pretty smart, right? Like top 1015?
Percent exactly. Once you're past that threshold,
having an even higher IQ, say 14160, even 180, like Langan's
estimated IQ, doesn't seem to translate into significantly

(22:22):
more real world success. Other factors become much more
important. So being smarter than 1/20
doesn't necessarily make you more successful than someone
with a 120. Pretty much.
The British psychologist Liam Hudson put it bluntly.
A scientist with an IQ of 130 isjust as likely to win a Nobel
Prize as one with an IQ of 1 or 80.

(22:42):
Once you're smart enough, more smarts don't automatically mean
more achievement. Gladwell uses that basketball
analogy right. Yeah, it's perfect.
You need to be tall enough to play pro basketball, maybe 6
feet 61. But being 68 doesn't
automatically make you better than someone who's 66 like
Michael Jordan. You just need to clear the
heights threshold. IQ is similar.

(23:02):
You need to clear the intelligence threshold for a
given field. And the evidence supports this.
Yeah, look at Nobel Prize winner.
Sure, some went to Harvard or MIT, but many others went to
less elite undergraduate colleges.
De Paul, Holy Cross, University of Illinois.
Good schools, but not necessarily the ones attracting
only the absolute highest IQ students.
It suggests being smart enough is the key, not necessarily

(23:25):
being the smartest. And that University of Michigan
law school study? That seemed really telling.
Very telling and controversial for some.
They looked at minority studentsadmitted under affirmative
action, who sometimes had lower test scores than their white
peers. You'd expect based purely on
scores they might struggle more after graduation.
Right. But when they track their actual

(23:45):
careers, income impact, community contributions, they
perform just as well, sometimes even better than the students
with higher initial scores. Why?
Because even with slightly lowerscores, they were stillwell
above the intelligence thresholdneeded to succeed as lawyers.
Once you're in a room full of smart people, other things
differentiate you. OK.

(24:06):
So if it's not just about havingthe highest IQ, especially past
that threshold, what is that other thing?
What's the missing piece? Gladwell argues it's something
called practical intelligence. Practical intelligence not the
same as analytical IQ. Nope, totally different IQ tests
measure analytical reasoning, abstract problem solving.
Practical intelligence is more like street smarts.

(24:28):
Social savvy. It's knowing how to navigate the
real world effectively. How do you measure that?
It's trickier. Gladwell mentions divergent
tests, tests that measure creativity, thinking outside the
box, like how many uses can you think of for a brick?
Right, and some people give really imaginative answers,
while others stick to the obvious.
Exactly. The high IQ person might just

(24:49):
say building things, throwing the person with higher divergent
or practical intelligence might come up with Wilder, more varied
uses. It's about flexibility and
applying knowledge situationally.
So how would you define practical intelligence?
Psychologist Robert Sternberg calls it knowing what to say to
whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for

(25:10):
maximum effect. It's procedural.
Knowing how to do things, not just what things are, how to
read situations, persuade people, get what you need.
And crucially, Gladwell says, it's learned right, not innate
like IQ is often assumed to be. Yes, that's key.
It's learned largely from your family.
You're bringing your environment.
You can have a sky high IQ and low practical intelligence or

(25:31):
the reverse. Ideally, for huge success you
need both. Which brings us back to
Christopher Langan, the Super genius.
Tragically, yes. Despite his incredible
intellect, his life story is marked by struggles.
He lost scholarships at good colleges like Reed and Montana
State. Why?
What happened? Things that some with more
practical intelligence might have navigated easily.

(25:53):
His mother didn't fill out financial aid forms correctly.
His car broke down, and he couldn't persuade a Dean to
change his class schedule. So he dropped out.
He just couldn't work the system.
He lacked that social savvy, that ability to advocate for
himself within institutions. Exactly.
He was intellectually brilliant but practically isolated.
He even admitted later he didn'tknow how to approach mainstream

(26:15):
publishers or navigate the world.
No one, he said, ever makes it alone.
It's heartbreaking. Now contrast that with J Robert
Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the Manhattan Project.
Right. Also incredibly brilliant.
Off the charts smart, but crucially, he also possessed
immense practical intelligence. Even though he had his own
issues, right? Didn't he try to poison his

(26:36):
tutor? He did.
He had periods of instability, but he could also charm,
persuade, manage people, navigate complex political and
military environments. Think about it.
He convinced General Leslie Groves, this hard nosed military
engineer, to give him arguably the most important, most
sensitive job of the 20th century.

(26:57):
How did he do that? He knew how to talk to Groves,
how to appeal to his background,how to manage his concerns.
Oppenheimer knew how to get the world to see things his way and
give him what he needed. It's hard to imagine Oppenheimer
being thwarted by a financial aid form or an inflexible Dean.
He had the savvy. So where does this crucial
practical intelligence come from, if it's learned?

(27:18):
Gladwell points directly to family background.
Drawing on sociologist Annette La Rose's work, she identified 2
distinct parenting styles often linked to social class.
OK, what are they? 1st is concerted cultivation,
typically seen in middle class families.
These parents actively manage their kids.
Live schedules packed with activities.
Constant dialogue encouraging them to question adults,

(27:38):
negotiate, express their opinions.
They teach them how to interact with institutions.
Exactly. They intervene with teachers,
doctors. La Roe gives the example of a
nine year old boy, Alex Williams, whose mother prompts
him with questions for the doctor and he confidently
interrupts the appointment to ask them.
This teaches kids a sense of entitlement, not in a bad way,
but a sense that they have the right to speak up, customize

(28:02):
their environment, make institutions work for them.
OK, that's concerted cultivation.
What's the other style? Lureau calls it the
accomplishment of natural growth, more common in working
class and poor families. Parents provide love, safety,
basic needs, but they tend to let children structure their own
time more, play more freely. There's less organized activity,

(28:23):
more boundary between kids and adults.
And how does this affect interactions with institutions?
These parents, and consequently their children, often feel more
deferential towards authority figures like teachers or
doctors. They're less likely to challenge
or customize. This can lead to feelings of
distance, distrust and constraint when dealing with
formal institutions, leaving kids less equipped to advocate

(28:45):
for themselves or navigate bureaucracy.
And this difference directly explains Oppenheimer versus
Langan. It's a huge part of it.
Oppenheimer grew up wealthy in Manhattan.
Textbook, concerted cultivation.He learned how to work the
system from day one. Langan came from poverty, A
chaotic family background, the accomplishment of natural
growth, maybe even less structure than that.

(29:06):
He never learned those crucial skills of practical
intelligence. Which brings us back to Turman
and his termites. His big mistake.
His huge mistake. He was blinded by IQ.
He thought stratospheric IQ was everything, but his geniuses,
despite their scores, didn't disproportionately achieve
compared to others from similar privilege backgrounds.

(29:27):
Many had very ordinary careers. And he even rejected future
Nobel winners because their IQ wasn't quite high enough by his
standard. Right, he missed the bigger
picture. Sociologist Pittarum Sorkin
argued later that if Terminate just picked kids randomly from
the same background as his termites without any IQ test,
he'd have found a group almost as successful.
So the take away is once you're smart enough that threshold IQ

(29:50):
is met, it's practical intelligence plus opportunity
plus background that really makes the difference.
Exactly. Your upbringing, the cultural
toolkit your family gives you, profoundly shapes your ability
to seize opportunities and make your way in the world, often
much more than a few extra IQ points.
OK wow, so many layers. Community birth dates, 10,000
hours fueled by opportunity, thethreshold of IQ plus practical

(30:14):
intelligence. What else?
There's another huge one demographic luck, and how
sometimes what looks like a disadvantage can actually become
an advantage. Gladwell tells the story of the
legendary New York lawyer JosephFlom.
The Super successful lawyer built a huge firm right Skadden
Arps, often seen as the classic rise to riches story.
The quintessential self-made manof law overcame poverty,

(30:37):
discrimination, all the usual tropes.
But Gladwell, predictably, findsmore to the story.
As wise, he peels back the layers and shows how the very
things that seemed like obstacles for Flom, his
background, the kind of work he was forced into, actually became
his hidden advantages. How does that work?
It starts with discrimination, right?
Mid 20th century New York, the big established Wall Street law

(30:58):
firms, the white shoe firms wereincredibly elitist, mostly
Wasps, old money. They wouldn't hire Jewish
lawyers or Italians or others from undesirable backgrounds, no
matter how smart they were. So Flom, being the son of Jewish
immigrants, couldn't get a job at those top firms.
Nope, shut out. Along with many other brilliant

(31:19):
lawyers from similar backgrounds.
It was a rigid barrier. So what did they do?
They had to start their own firms or join smaller, newer
firms, and they had to take whatever legal work came through
the door, the stuff the white shoe firms considered beneath
them. What kind of work was that?
A lot of litigation, which the big firms disdained and
critically, something called proxy fights.

(31:40):
Basically hostile corporate takeovers.
Which the established firms didn't want to touch.
They thought it was messy, undignified, like street
brawling compared to their preferred corporate work like
handling stocks and bonds. They look down on it.
So these outsider firms like Floms ended up specializing in
this unfashionable work. They had no choice, and they got
really, really good at it. For 20 years, through the 50s

(32:02):
and 60s, Flom and others like him were down in the trenches,
mastering the art of the hostiletakeover, the proxy fight.
It was their snake pit, their training ground.
They were putting in their 10,000 hours in this very
specific niche area of law that nobody else valued.
Exactly. They became the world's experts
in corporate warfare while the fancy Uptown lawyers were doing

(32:23):
other things. And none.
Then the world changed in the 1970's.
The economy shifted. Mergers and acquisitions,
including hostile takeovers, exploded.
Suddenly, this obscure, slightlydisreputable practice area
became the center of the corporate universe.
And who are the experts? Joe Pham and the handful of
other firms who've been forced into doing it for decades.

(32:43):
Suddenly their adversity being excluded became their
opportunity. They had the skills nobody else
had, just when the market desperately needed them.
So it wasn't just that they werebrilliant lawyers, it was that
they had spent years honing a very specific skill set that
suddenly became incredibly valuable.
Right. They were ready when the wave
hit because they'd been surfing in those waters for years when

(33:04):
no one else was. But.
Gladwell adds another layer to this, doesn't he?
It wasn't just what they did, but when they were born.
Demographic luck. Yes, the timing is crucial.
He contrasts Maurice Janklow, a lawyer born in 19 O2 who
struggled through the Depression, with his son Mort
Janklow, born in the early 1930s, who became massively

(33:26):
successful. Same family, different eras.
What was special about being born in the early 1930s?
Gladwell calls it the demographic through it was a
relatively small generation bornafter the depression slump but
before the post war baby. And being part of the smaller
generation was an advantage. Huge advantages.
They finished school after the worst of the Depression.
World War 2, if they serve, was often an opportunity, not just a

(33:48):
disruption. Critically, they faced less
competition. Less competition for college
spots for jobs. Yes, easier to get into good
universities. Ted Friedman, another lawyer
from that cohort, got into Michigan.
Easily paid, low tuition, found high paying summer jobs readily
available when they graduated. The job market was good,

(34:09):
demanding their skills, and there weren't masses of people
competing for the same positions.
So it was just easier to get ahead if you were born in that
window. Relatively speaking, yes, the
path was clearer, fewer obstacles.
And specifically for these New York Jewish lawyers, being born
in the early 1930s was perfect timing because it meant they

(34:31):
were in their late 30s or early 40s by the 1970s, right when the
takeover boom started. They had already put in maybe 15
years practicing that specific kind of law, their Hamburg
period. They were experienced, ready,
right at the prime of their careers when their niche
exploded. While the older generation had
struggled through the Depressionand the younger baby boomers
faced more competition. Exactly.

(34:52):
It was a demographic sweet spot.So Flum's success was this
incredible confluence, being an outsider, being forced into
developing a specific skill and being born at the absolute
perfect time for that skill to become hugely valuable.
It challenges the idea that it was just his individual
brilliance. History and demography played
massive roles. Wow, the layers just keep adding

(35:13):
up. OK so far we have community,
opportunity, practice, intelligence, timing.
What about culture itself? The deeper patterns we inherit.
Ah yes, cultural legacies. This is another profound theme.
And outliers. Gladwell argues that where we
come from, our cultural heritageequips us with certain skills,
attitudes and tendencies that play a huge role in our success,

(35:34):
often in ways we don't even realize.
And he illustrates this with plane crashes.
Seems like an odd connection. It does it first.
He looks at the unusually high crash rate of Korean Air back in
the 1980s and 90s. It wasn't the planes.
They had modern aircraft. It wasn't necessarily pilot
incompetence and basic flying skills.
It was something subtler. What was it?
A pattern of human errors, oftenrelated to communication in the

(35:57):
cockpit. Gladwell explains that most
accidents, like plane crashes orindustrial disasters like 3 Mile
Island, aren't caused by one bigmistake.
It's usually a series of small things going wrong.
Exactly the seven errors rule. He calls it a sequence of minor
errors, often combined with fatigue, bad weather, unfamiliar
crews flying. Together, these things create a

(36:20):
situation right for disaster if communication breaks down.
And communication was the key issue with Korean Air.
He uses that Avianca crash as anexample.
Too, right? The one that run out of fuel
near New York. Yes, Avianca 05/2 is a classic
tragic example. Colombian airline, tired crew,
bad weather, endless holding patterns, burning fuel fast.

(36:40):
The first officer knew they werein serious trouble.
But he didn't communicate it effectively to air traffic
control. He tried, but he used what's
called mitigated speech. He hinted.
He downplayed. He was indirect.
He'd see things like we're running low on fuel, but he
wouldn't use the official, unmistakable word emergency.
Why not if they're in danger? Because of cultural factors, he
was the first officer talking tothe captain and also talking to

(37:02):
ATC. He was being deferential.
Air traffic control used to moredirect communication didn't pick
up on the true severity they heard.
It is just a comment, not a critical warning.
And this links to culture how? Through the concept of Power
Distance index, or PDI, developed by the sociologist
Geert hosted PDI measures how much a culture accepts and

(37:24):
expects inequality and hierarchy.
So high PDI means strong respectfor authority, less likely to
challenge superiors. Exactly.
Columbia and South Korea are examples of high PDI cultures.
the US and many Northern European countries are low PDI.
In a high PDI culture, a subordinate like a first officer
is much less likely to speak assertively or directly

(37:45):
challenge a captain, even if thecaptain is making mistake.
Because it feels disrespectful. Crash, the first officer needs
to be, were doomed, but his mitigated warnings weren't
strong enough to cut through thenoise and the cultural
expectations of deference. Wow culture literally
contributing to a plane crash. So how did Korean Air fix their

(38:09):
problem? They brought in an outside
consultant, David Greenberg fromDelta, and he made a radical
change, mandated English as the official language of the
cockpit. English.
Why English specifically? Because English is structurally
a lower PDI language, it doesn'thave the same built in markers
of hierarchy and deference as Korean.
Using English essentially forcedthe pilots into a different

(38:31):
cultural mode, a more direct, egalitarian way of
communicating. It gave them an alternate
identity in the cockpit. That's how Greenberg put it.
It freed them from their ingrained cultural habits of
mitigation and deference, allowing for clearer, more
assertive communication, and their safety record improved
dramatically. It shows culture is powerful,
but not necessarily destiny. Amazing.

(38:53):
OK, from plane crashes to math scores, how does culture play
into that? Gladwell points to the
consistent outperformance of students from East Asian
countries, Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore on
international math tests. They're always at the top right.
Consistently, while Western countries often lag behind.
Part of it, Gladwell suggests, is linguistic.

(39:15):
The way numbers are named. Yes, Asian number systems are
incredibly logical and transparent. 11 is 10112 IS
10224 is 2 tens 4. It makes the structure of math,
counting, and basic operations much clearer and easier for
young kids to grasp conceptually.
Compared to English with weird words like 11/12/13.

(39:37):
Exactly. Our system is irregular.
That simple linguistic difference might give Asian kids
an early advantage and make mapsseem less arbitrary, maybe more
engaging. But there's a deeper cultural
explanation too, isn't there? Something about rice paddies?
Yes, this is the really fascinating part, the legacy of
wet rice farming, dominant in much of East Asia for thousands
of years. How is farming rice different?

(39:59):
It's incredibly complex and labor intensive, way more than
growing weed or corn. Maybe 3000 hours of work per
year versus 1000. Had to build patties, manage
intricate irrigation, transplant.
Plant seedlings by hand. Weed constantly.
It's meticulous, demanding work.OK, so it requires a lot of
effort. A huge amount, but crucially,
it's also meaningful work where effort correlates directly with

(40:22):
reward. The harder and smarter you work
your rice Paddy, the more rice you harvest.
It's not like feudal farming where a Lord takes most of your
output regardless of your effort.
So it teaches a direct link between hard work and success.
Precisely. It requires skill, planning,
diligence, persistence. Over centuries, this fostered a
powerful cultural ethic that values hard work, patience and

(40:45):
meticulousness. The belief that effort leads to
reward became deeply ingrained. And this translates to math.
Gladwell argues yes, the cultural inheritance, the belief
in persistence, the willingness to stick with a difficult
problem is exactly what's neededto excel in mathematics.
He quotes Asian proverbs like noone who can rise before dawn 360

(41:06):
days a year fails to make his family rich with that deep
seated work ethic applied now toacademics instead of
agriculture. So the same cultural legacy that
might cause communication issuesin a cockpit, deference can
provide a huge advantage in a math classroom.
Exactly. Culture provides A toolkit, and
depending on the situation, those tools can be helpful or
hindering. It's powerful, often invisible

(41:28):
stuff, shaping our abilities andattitudes.
This is all incredibly thought provoking.
So if success is this complex mix of opportunity, culture,
timing, community, how do we actually create more success?
Can we replicate these advantages for people who don't
just stumble into them? That's the hopeful final section
of outliers Gladwell looks at the Kikai PP Schools Knowledge

(41:52):
is Power program, specifically one in the South Bronx, a very
disadvantaged neighborhood. These are public schools getting
amazing results, right? With kids from tough
backgrounds. Incredible results.
Kids chosen by lottery, often from low income single parent
homes. Yet by 8th grade they're
performing math at the same level as kids in wealthy
suburban schools. It seems almost impossible.

(42:12):
So what's their secret? Is it finding super genius kids
better teachers? The teachers are dedicated, yes,
but the real secret, Gladwell argues, is time.
Key IPP challenges one of the most fundamental assumptions of
American education, the long summer vacation.
A summer vacation? How is that the problem?
Research by sociologist Carl Alexander show the kids learn at
roughly the same rate during theschool year, regardless of

(42:35):
background. But over the summer, wealthy
kids keep learning Camps, books,travel, museums.
Poor kids often tread water or even regress.
The summer slide. Exactly.
And that gap, accumulated year after year, accounts for a huge
amount of the achievement difference by high school.
Our long summer break, a legacy of the old agricultural

(42:56):
calendar, actually exacerbates inequality.
And Asian school systems have much shorter summer breaks,
longer school years overall. Way longer, like 220 days in
South Korea, 243 in Japan versusabout 180 in the US.
They simply give students more time in school learning.
So key IPP solution is more school.
Yeah, basically, yes. They bring the logic of the rice

(43:17):
Paddy, the value of extended meaningful effort to the South
Bronx. They extend the school day
dramatically from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM.
Wow, that's a long day for middle schoolers.
It is. Plus they have mandatory
Saturday classes, 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM and about three extra
weeks of school in July. They're essentially eliminating
that summer learning gap and giving students the time needed

(43:39):
to truly practice and master thematerial.
So it's like giving them their 10,000 hours, or at least a
significant chunk of it within the school structure.
Precisely. And that extra time changes the
whole atmosphere. Teachers aren't rushed.
They can explain things thoroughly, make subjects
meaningful, let kids wrestle with problems until they get
that aha moment, like the girl Renee spending 22 minutes on
undefined slope. An average kid might give up

(44:01):
after 2 minutes. KPP fosters that persistence.
It cultivates the same ethic of effort leading to reward that
the rice Paddy culture did. It makes the work meaningful and
shows a clear path to success through diligence.
And Gladwell tells the story of Marita, the KPP student.
Yeah, Marita's bargain, this 12 year old whose day starts at 545
AM to get to KPP and do her homework.

(44:22):
She gives up evenings, weekends,hangs out less with old friends.
It's a huge sacrifice. Tough bargain for a kid.
Incredibly tough. But what does she get in return?
A real, tangible chance. A chance to escape poverty?
Get scholarships to top private high schools.
Be the first in her family to goto college.
KPP offers a path out built on the premise that given the

(44:43):
opportunity and the time, these kids can achieve extraordinary
things. So KPP essentially manufacturers
the conditions for success that Gladwell identifies throughout
the book. Opportunity, meaningful work,
time for practice. Fostering persistence.
Exactly. It brings all the themes
together. It shows that we can overcome
disadvantages if we deliberatelycreate environments that provide

(45:05):
the necessary ingredients for success.
It's not about innate talent. It's about giving kids a chance,
the right kind of chance, and the structure to seize it.
Marita needed Kipp to provide the time and the belief system.
The rice Paddy in the Bronx. So wrapping this all up, what's
the big take away from outliers?How should we really think about
success? The core message is pretty
radical, really. Success isn't mysterious or

(45:27):
purely individual. Gladwell calls it a gift, but
not a gift of talent, a gift of circumstance.
It's a product of all these hidden advantage, lucky breaks,
cultural inheritances, extraordinary opportunities.
Outliers aren't just born, they're made by their
environment, their history, their community.
It completely demolishes that self-made myth.
Utterly nobody makes it alone. Whether it's the Rosendons

(45:50):
benefiting from community, Bill Gates from lucky computer
access, Joe Flom from demographic timing, or the QPP
kids from extended school time, success is always embedded in a
web of advantages, inheritances and opportunities.
Some earn, some lucky, but all critical context is king.
Which leaves us with a really powerful question, doesn't it?
A final thought for you listening right now.

(46:11):
Yeah, if we stop being so mesmerized by the successful
individual and start looking seriously at the world that
produced them, the opportunities, the culture, the
timing, what could we achieve? What if we didn't just wait for
luck? What if we intentionally created
those lucky breaks, those Kiki Plike opportunities for
thousands, maybe millions more kids?
Kids born in the wrong month. They're from disadvantaged

(46:32):
backgrounds. Imagine how much untapped
potential could be unlocked, howmuch richer, more innovative,
maybe just fundamentally fairer our society could be if we
designed it to give everyone thechance to put in their 10,000
hours to benefit from their cultural background, to get the
practical intelligence they need.
What changes could we make in our own communities, schools,

(46:53):
workplaces, knowing what we now know about the real story of
success? Something to definitely think
about. Absolutely.
That's our deep dive into Malcolm.
Welcome Gladwell's Outliers. Thanks so much for joining us on
this exploration.