2024-10-10
10 分钟The Economist Hi there, it's Jason Palmer here,
co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
This is Editor's Picks.
You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist read aloud.
Enjoy.
You know what you're getting when you open a book by Malcolm Gladwell.
it will centre around a modestly counter-intuitive argument.
Being huge and strong is often a disadvantage,
for instance, or talent and genius are overrated.
Evidence for this thesis will be broken into around ten chapters,
each containing a combination of briskly written reportage,
historical anecdote and social science that draws out unexpected connections.
between, for example, Lawrence of Arabia and a girl's basketball team,
or a high-achieving school district and the wild cheetah population.
Readers will finish the book feeling better informed about how the world works.
Mr Gladwell's detractors say this feeling is an illusion.
Social scientists who have reviewed his writings snarkily point out minor factual errors.
Others consider him a bullshitter who cherry-picks data,
oversimplifies complex questions and sprinkles social science over platitudes to make them seem profound.
For his part, Mr Gladwell has argued that, On the one hand, that sounds defiantly folksy.