Mount Royal University Centennial

Malcolm Gladwell

Writer Malcolm Gladwell takes readers down seemingly disconnected paths, often following little more than a hunch or a tenuous lead towards an unfamiliar destination.

It’s a journey fuelled by curiosity and designed to challenge and surprise both reader and writer. And it’s precisely what’s made Gladwell one of North America’s best-known and most prescient observers of societal and cultural trends — as well as an in-demand speaker.

Renowned writer and thinker, Malcolm Gladwell is set to leave his mark on Calgary, thanks to Mount Royal University. The event is sold out.

Calgarians will have the opportunity to hear the gifted storyteller and acclaimed writer on March 10 as part of Mount Royal University’s centennial Legacy of Ideas series — an occasion he looks forward to because of the “intellectual openness and adventurousness” he expects of those attending.

“In my own work, I try to keep my mind open and constantly expose myself to new ideas — and I try to make that possible for others,” he says of his desire to challenge conventional thinking and to engage people in dialogue about societal issues.

You have to start somewhere

“As a writer, starting conversations is as much as I can hope to do,” he explains. “I hope to get people talking and thinking, which is no small thing. And if that’s what I’ve done, then I’ve accomplished something incredibly important.”

Since he began writing for The New Yorker in 1996, Gladwell has accomplished something important. He has built a career searching for the counterintuitive in what appears mundane. He uncovers truths hidden in strange data and sees similarities among events and actions that, for most people, would be totally unrelated.

Topics from serial killers to steroids in sports, the decades-spanning rise in I.Q. scores to homelessness, become clearer when seen through the Gladwell lense. His books The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and, most recently, What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, have been described as “intellectual adventure stories” and top the best-seller charts for weeks.

One of Time’s most influential to influence us

Time magazine named Gladwell one of its 100 Most Influential People in 2005 and one needs look no further than “Million-Dollar Murray,” an article published in The New Yorker in 2006, to see why.

The article highlighted the staggering societal costs of managing homelessness, instead of truly ending it, and proved to be a catalyst for nationwide action in the U.S., which, in turn, inspired Alberta’s own 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness.

Gladwell’s article pushed readers to consider an alternative to a popularly held view.

Doing so, he admits, can make people uncomfortable, and he believes that the more he invites audiences to embrace the challenge, the better the resulting conversation.

“Talks like the one I'll be giving in Calgary ideally provide opportunities for people to be challenged,” he says. “I intend to threaten the world view of those who come to listen.”

He says too many people forget that there is something exciting and wonderful about discovering new ideas and being surprised.

“For all of us, every day, to remain vital, intellectually and socially, we need to be surprised,” he says.

“At a time when things in the world are the way they are, it’s more and more important to fight mental inertia, to resist the very human impulse to make up your mind and refuse to budge.”

— Cathy Nickel, March 3, 2011