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I miss his old work, when it was focused more on pop-culture, and less on idealism, and politics. The podcast was going really well but as soon as he started go

I miss his old work, when it was focused more on pop-culture, and less on idealism, and politics. The podcast was going really well but as soon as he started going off on politics I lost interest really quick.

SQueeeeeL 5y ago
I love the idea that any history/philosophy can be divorced from politics. Like, I only enjoy hearing this human beings thoughts and opinions, but only if they exist in this narrow band of what I deem acceptable. His ideas on satire are extremely valuable IMO, explicitly because of the political nature of his arguments. It critiques the inability of modern social systems inability critique those in power, and skillfully intermixes the politics of the time to enhance his point (that part about A Wonderful Country is beautiful, how an extremely political point can be made through satire, leagues beyond SNL)
- mejari 5y ago
  I think there's a valid distinction between "using the politics of the time to better understand history" and "pushing personal politics through the teaching of history"
jedimastert 5y ago
Yeah, I kinda dipped when I felt like there were more opinions than history. Like, I understand that all history is colored by the person telling it, and that was kinda the whole idea behind Revisionist History in the first place, but I felt like he moved from highlighting less known aspects of history to highlighting basically where he thought history had gone wrong.
Tactician_mark 5y ago
Was there a time when Gladwell wasn't political? The Tipping Point was his first book, and it helped popularize broken windows policing.
- sjg007 5y ago
  That style of policing was popular before Gladwell. It was Giuliani who really doubled down on it in NYC as the exemplar. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory It is also known as stop and frisk. This type of policing has also been adopted to traffic stops as well and arguably has lead to warrior cop policing. Gladwell discusses the implications of this in Talking to Strangers. So if you want a perspective on guns, gun violence, policing from the 1970s until today, I recommend it.

SQueeeeeL 5y ago

I love the idea that any history/philosophy can be divorced from politics. Like, I only enjoy hearing this human beings thoughts and opinions, but only if they exist in this narrow band of what I deem acceptable. His ideas on satire are extremely valuable IMO, explicitly because of the political nature of his arguments. It critiques the inability of modern social systems inability critique those in power, and skillfully intermixes the politics of the time to enhance his point (that part about A Wonderful Country is beautiful, how an extremely political point can be made through satire, leagues beyond SNL)

mejari 5y ago
I think there's a valid distinction between "using the politics of the time to better understand history" and "pushing personal politics through the teaching of history"

jedimastert 5y ago

Yeah, I kinda dipped when I felt like there were more opinions than history. Like, I understand that all history is colored by the person telling it, and that was kinda the whole idea behind Revisionist History in the first place, but I felt like he moved from highlighting less known aspects of history to highlighting basically where he thought history had gone wrong.

Tactician_mark 5y ago

Was there a time when Gladwell wasn't political? The Tipping Point was his first book, and it helped popularize broken windows policing.

sjg007 5y ago
That style of policing was popular before Gladwell. It was Giuliani who really doubled down on it in NYC as the exemplar. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory It is also known as stop and frisk. This type of policing has also been adopted to traffic stops as well and arguably has lead to warrior cop policing. Gladwell discusses the implications of this in Talking to Strangers. So if you want a perspective on guns, gun violence, policing from the 1970s until today, I recommend it.