Loving Today: Malcolm Gladwell’s New Podcast
In this series we ask members of New Brunswick’s business community to share the things they’re loving these days.
Today Huddle’s Allan Gates tells us what he’s loving:
“Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell has earned a global reputation as a writer of thoughtful yet entertaining books like The Tipping Point, Outliers and Blink. Now he’s taking his storytelling talents to a new medium: podcasts. His new Revisionist History series reinterprets “something from the past: an event, a person, an idea. Something overlooked. Something misunderstood,” according to its web site.
It features Gladwell’s trademark weaving of different storylines together in interesting ways. One particularly great episodes focuses on creativity, the differences between an instant genius, like Picasso, and a more plodding genius, like Cezanne.
Gladwell helps tell the story through the evolution of the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah, which only came into its own after countless revisions to the lyrics by Cohen and countless covers by other artists, most notably Jeff Buckley (although my personal favourite is the Rufus Wainwright version). Now it is considered a classic, one of the greatest songs of all time.
Gladwell’s dulcet tones, clever pacing and the excellent editing make every episode enjoyable. It’s worth your time.”
Listen to Gladwell’s Hallelujah episode from Revisionist History.