Malcolm Gladwell: How would lottery-style elections change American politics? | Big Think

Welcome everyone to Big Think Live. I'm Latif Nasser, a producer for the New York Public Radio show Radiolab and the host of the Netflix show Connected. Today's topic is how to re-examine everything you know, and we are happy to welcome back Malcolm Gladwell. For the five people on planet Earth who do not know Malcolm Gladwell, he is primarily known as the author of six blockbuster books, the titles of which you can combine into the following phrase: What the Dog Saw, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, The Tipping Point, and Talking to Strangers.

He is not only a renowned author; he has also produced over 50 episodes of his acclaimed podcast Revisionist History and written dozens of long-form articles for The New Yorker magazine, all of which embody his signature brand of being a polite but playful contrarian. Whether you agree or disagree with his typically counter-intuitive arguments, you cannot but be impressed by the perverse and often baffling range of topics he chooses.

In this latest season of Revisionist History alone, for example, he covers a con man trying to dupe the world about billionaire playboy Howard Hughes, the Ivy League origins of napalm, and a minor Van Gogh painting that doesn't look like a Van Gogh painting. As a fellow scrawny Canadian with curly hair, I am so pleased to be able to talk to Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome, Malcolm.

Malcolm Gladwell: Thank you! Delighted to be on the show. I have a bushel full of questions for you about the world that is on literal and figurative fire around us. But first, I wanted to start by talking about the thing that you're actually here to talk about and is well worth talking about, which is the latest season, Season Five of Revisionist History.

At the start of the final episode, you give kind of a sweeping thematic summary of the season. You say it's a season about attachments. Can you tell me more about that?

Gladwell: Yeah, you know, it always emerges in Revisionist History episode seasons that there's a kind of underlying idea that seems to connect at least some of the shows. That's just how my mind works—I tend to worry an idea to death. This season, I felt that what linked a lot of the shows was this idea of how we get attached to ideas. It wasn't so much people but attaching to ways of doing things that aren't necessarily rational, and probing the appropriateness of those continuing attachments.

That sounds—when I put it that way—it sounds really boring, but in fact, I think the answer is it wasn't boring. By its very nature, when you're trying to find a common theme in ten very different shows, the theme is going to be pretty bland. Or maybe "loose" is a nice more charitable way. But at this very moment, in this—and I don't know sort of when exactly you finished and reported all these episodes, how it fit into the COVID world—it does feel like it's a moment when we're all kind of uptight, and all the routines and ways of doing things are upended.

I don't know if this—how did COVID sort of figure into this season?

Gladwell: Quite a lot. I started reporting and conceiving of it in January and finished in June, early July. So, I had probably reported maybe two episodes by the time COVID started ramping up—three episodes. So, it was very much in the back of my head. What I didn't want to do was to explicitly talk about it because I felt like there was enough media on COVID; the world didn't need Malcolm Gladwell to weigh in on it. But I did think that the mood of the season was very much influenced by that.

Are there any specific ways that you felt like, "Oh, I made this choice differently," or "I would have done this story and not that story?"

Gladwell: Sure. The last episode of the season, which I think is the best—it's called "A Memorial for the Living"—is really about COVID, but it never mentions it. It's just something I—when you're in the middle of a pandemic that's claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, this episode asked the question of how do you remember those who have been affected by some kind of tragedy? I use the example of the 9/11 memorial, and I also use the example of the work of a homeless advocacy group in Jacksonville.

That again seems like an odd pairing, but the point of the episode is to convince you that it's not an odd pairing. The larger point is we, as a society, spend a lot of time and attention remembering things, and some things we remember a good deal better than others. Are those ways of remembering—do they make sense? Are they morally justifiable? I think that, in our case, they're not morally justifiable. I would never have come to that episode had it not been for the kind of shadow of COVID, so it does show up explicitly in the end.

Yeah, and it was such a beautiful episode because it wasn't just about remembering the dead. In a way, almost what do we learn in the spirit of a memorial for dead people? What do we do for living people?

Gladwell: Yeah, what do we learn? The point is where I land in the end is that memorials for the dead are supposed to be rehearsals for the way we treat the living. That's the point, right? The reason you remember the fallen soldier is that it reminds you to keep an eye out and keep watch over the current soldier. I think that implicit pact we made years ago about memorials has been forgotten. Now we just remember the dead, and then it seems like we go on with our lives, which I find distressing.

Let’s dive into a different episode, which is the episode I am actually most excited to talk to you about, which is Episode Three, "Powerball Revolution."

Gladwell: Oh yeah!

In a way, I think it’s a classic Gladwell kind of question: How do we choose the right person for the job? You have looked at that question as it applies to hiring assistants, selecting law school students, and recruiting quarterbacks. But in this case, it's how do we pick the right person to lead our government? In this case, a high school student council president in Bolivia—no less, right?

Tell me about the sort of crazy idea that’s the central nugget of this episode.

Gladwell: I’ve always been interested in lotteries. I think lotteries are massively underutilized, and I just love the idea that when you choose something by chance, then you completely change the psychological and ethical framework of this election. If I chose the students of Harvard University by lottery, then you would feel very differently about having gone to Harvard. You would say, "Oh, this is a privilege to go to the greatest school in the world," not "a prize that I won that I deserve to win." It’s an arbitrary privilege in a way—not something that came to me because I'm a great person.

I ran across this guy named Adam Cronkrite who sat down and took this idea very seriously. He went to Bolivia and started trying to convince public schools to choose their student government by lottery and then he tracks what happens. What he finds is something completely unexpected. First of all, when you go to a lottery system, the number of people who run for higher office in a school grows dramatically. Democratic elections, which we think are ways of throwing the field as far wide open as possible, don't do that—they scare people off. Lotteries feel wide open.

Secondly, he found that when you choose a student council president by lottery, they're much more serious and have a much wider array of things they're interested in doing. That’s because you’re choosing a much more diverse pool—no longer the clique of the popular kids; it's everyone. Most importantly, though, he found that you could not predict who was going to be a really good student leader. All your expectations were upended.

They would choose these slates of government by lottery and say to each other, "Oh, that’s a really shy kid who’s not a very good student; he’s going to be terrible." Oh my god, and then that kid would turn out to be the best. Or they’d be a really charismatic, handsome, driven kid and they think, "Oh my goodness, what a leader!" and that kid would be a disaster. They realized that the whole premise of elections—which is that we can't effectively predict who's going to be a good leader—is nonsense.

Those three insights to my mind are so fantastic and so relevant to what we're in right now. I also, as often as the case in these things, completely fell for Adam Cronkrite. I'd love for everyone to spend time with him and learn from him. It's one of my favorite episodes from this season.

Part of the fun is you don't just kind of listen to Cronkrite talk about the tales of what happened in Bolivia; you also bring this to a school in New Jersey.

Gladwell: Oh yeah, yeah.

What happened there? I wanted to keep hearing what happened even after the episode.

Gladwell: I took the idea to this fancy private school in New Jersey and basically pitched to them. I could have gathered a group of 20 students who represented all the student government of the school and a bunch of other people who were thinking of running. I told them what Adam Cronkrite was doing and said, "Would you do this at your school?"

Then I asked them to make a pact: I'm going to poll you secretly about how satisfied you are with your current method of student government. If the satisfaction level is below a certain point, I want you to pledge to change your system to something more Adam Cronkrite-y. They have a very elaborate system for electing student government, speeches, rounds, all nominations—a prototypical democratic system that has been in place for many years at that school.

When I walked them through their happiness with the system, I found that the average score was like 5.8. That’s a really low score for happiness with a democratic system. I walked them through what Adam was doing, and then we had a discussion. I found them surprisingly open to the idea of incorporating at least some elements of a lottery into their student government.

Then COVID hit, and they all scattered away, so we don't have a definitive answer. But we heard from the incoming student council president, and she says she's going to try and push through some changes for next year.

I was wondering why you didn't take it all the way—it sounds like it's because it's sort of disrespectful.

Gladwell: They're all in a—I also think it’s always a good question when you're telling a story like that. Do you want to take it all the way or leave it open-ended? It's an experiment; you want to hear what happened—not that it's definitive. In a way, I guess the way you present it becomes definitive, but it's just fun. You set up the little Rube Goldberg machine, and you want to see if it works.

The thing is, I would say, there are two ways of responding to this. One is to respond as you are, which is a kind of intelligent rational person's response: "Let’s see the experiment through." But then there's also the storyteller's response—now you are also a storyteller, so there are two sides to your personality.

Gladwell: There are two sides of your personality which you're on; you're letting your rational intelligent self rule here. Let me dispose of the storytelling side.

Okay, go for it!

Gladwell: You’ve already conducted it during Bolivia. Adam has done it; he has results. He’s observed for years what happens. So we have our little case study.

Is the story better if I tell another complete case study, or is the story better if I leave the question hanging of why is this so hard for us?

I would be almost more interested in the idea that a bunch of privileged kids in New Jersey would reject this idea as I am that they would accept it. In other words, to leave the question hanging of why is this so hard for us.

You brought up sort of the storyteller sense because I stumbled on a story back in 2016 about city councils in Utrecht, where they did a similar thing. They call it "alliatoric democracy." I pitched it to my editorial team at Radiolab, and unlike the New Jersey school, they were like, "No way—this seems ridiculous."

To me, the fun of this, and perhaps it's because it was open-ended, is that it makes you go off into this alternate universe where this is our standard of government—this is our form of picking supreme court justices.

What would it look like? How would it be different from this current universe we live in right now?

Gladwell: You probably want a two-stage system. You probably want to assemble a group of people who meet some set of requirements, put them in a big pool, and then choose your winner by lottery.

In the middle of that episode, I talk about NIH grants, scientific grants, and how they're awarded. When the NIH looked at the grants it gives out for research, they discovered there wasn't a good correlation between their scores they gave a grant application and otherwise how successful those grant applications would be. In other words, their predictions about which ideas would be most worthy of funding were wrong. They proposed making the first cut and getting rid of the obviously incompetent stuff, and then we create a pool of any ideas that seem pretty good and then choose from that pool.

I think in general, college admissions should just assemble a large pool of pretty good students and pick the winners by lottery. I think job applications should put together a pool of pretty good applicants and pick the winner by lottery. I think that's the way to do it in government.

When I look at the Democratic candidates for president this year, I could make a case for any of them. It's not clear to me at all that we picked the best one.

Here's the difference, though. I would argue the NIH scientific studies can discern merit clearly, while politics is not just about picking the best person; it’s about legitimacy of the process. There’s a direct connection there that feels much more real than it actually is.

Gladwell: I totally agree with you. If we want to make a point, we have to recognize that our current system is crazy, and in fact so is this ardent belief in buy-in.

Okay, you make a great point. Here’s the thing, when I look around at the Democratic candidates for president, I see talented people. Then we would decide among all the respectable candidates we would retain the top contenders based on lottery selection.

Gladwell: You want to test how far the buy-in goes.

If you had all of them up there, you’re faced with no one being clearly better than the other.

Gladwell: If our system works, we could generate leaders based on a system that wasn’t only narrow, as it stands today.

To your point, what having a lottery system would do may lower the temperature of the situation.

Gladwell: Right, and it would make Congress beef up separation of powers; it would elevate the checks and balances.

I didn't realize you were Canadian!

Gladwell: From Mississauga.

That's where I'm from!

Gladwell: We are fellow kids of immigrants who emigrated to the U.S. to make their living telling long-form interesting stories about science—not to mention we have a weirdly similar body shape and hair type.

I know!

Gladwell: The Canadian system, if the leader is problematic, you just get rid of them. Why are Americans wedded to the notion that when you elect someone, they must finish their term?

Here's the thing: even if someone is craving revenge, I think the way to make the revision important is to collect individuals into this idea of the lottery.

Gladwell: I cannot tell you how profoundly I agree with you!

Your describing of that person makes me think of you.

Gladwell: But you can pin the argument on any candidate and hire a lottery selection.

The institution has some function, but not everything needs to be dictated.

Gladwell: I think it would take so much time for people to be up in arms. Society would be far better for everyone else.

That’s really fascinating.

Gladwell: Let’s move on, shall we?

Gladwell: You devote four episodes of this series to the story of Curtis LeMay.

The only things I really had heard of Curtis LeMay before I heard this series is that his nickname was "Bombs Away LeMay" and that he was the inspiration for the trigger-happy general in Dr. Strangelove. That being said, I want to explore the complex choices made during the Second World War.

Gladwell: You always want to humanize and come to terms with the ordinary choices made during the war. I wanted to include a story on the firebombing of Tokyo.

But to say I want to explore a man responsible for the deadliest night in human history is intense. What did you learn through this series?

Gladwell: I constantly found riveting complexity presented by the choices made by people in power during war. The more I looked into it, the more I saw the reasons that were buried in ancient moral complexities.

That is astonishing.

Gladwell: Yes, it might just be the deadliest night in human history.

To me, it's a bold move to say I want to complexify the portrait of this man who is responsible for so many deaths.

Gladwell: There’s something about audio storytelling that allows for more acceptance. When you present something that is complex, people will be much more forgiving.

That's interesting.

Gladwell: You can create a more nuanced exploration that allows individuals to learn and draw conclusions from emotions.

We've been toying for the longest time with doing a little spoof based on one of your episodes.

Gladwell: Please do it!

I'd like to talk deeper, but we need to open the floor to questions.

Gladwell: Alright!

Let’s ask audience questions.

Thank you for your time, Malcolm Gladwell. Please join this coming Thursday, September 24th, at 1 PM Eastern time for another live webinar when Big Think will be talking to three Michelin-star winning chef Dominique Crenn of Atelier Crenn. As always, our live webinar will include a viewer Q&A with the comments section on our YouTube and Facebook platforms. Stay safe, stay healthy, and have a great day. Thanks again, Malcolm!

Gladwell: Thank you!