Intellectual stimulation

Last night, I went along to the Lyceum Theatre in Covent Garden, with Him Next Door and also Her Next Door. We didn’t go to see the Lion King, which is what’s usually on there, but to hear a talk from Malcolm Gladwell. You may have heard of him - he’s written a few books, including ‘The Tipping Point’. And he’s a very clever chap.

His ‘niche’ as it were, seems to be extrapolating sections of data about various social behaviours, exploring them within the context of the culture they come from, and then explaining how and why this can cause certain events to happen.

For example, his talk last night was about plane crashes. And how most of the time they have nothing to do with the plane. Or any technical issues. They don’t even have anything to do with the capabilities of the pilot or co-pilot (or whether or not they are drunk or on drugs). Most plane crashes are caused by poor communication - either between the co-pilot and pilot, or between the co-pilot and air traffic control. He explained this in several ways (misinterpretation, mis-hearing commands etc), but the really interesting stuff was in ‘mitigation’ and Geert Hofstede's theory of ‘power distances’ (i.e. our relationships with people we perceive to be our superiors and how we phrase information according).

I won’t go into every detail as that’s his gig, and you can read all about that is his new book, but it was fascinating. As was his delivery. He’s highly skilled at public speaking, with a great sense of comic timing (and rhetoric, as one of my companions pointed out).

When he started speaking, people were whispering/unwrapping sweets/fidgeting around/getting comfy and generally driving me bonkers. (I have no truck with rowdy audiences.) However, by the time he finished the evening - reading a goosebump-inducing transcript from the black box recording of the last few minutes in the cockpit of a doomed jumbo jet - the entire theatre was rapt.

Left us with plenty of food for thought too. An excellent way to spend an evening, and it reminded me how much I always have, and still do, enjoy learning.

Interestingly, not everyone agrees with me.