Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell has made a fortune bringing academic ideas to a huge, popular audience.

He did it in “The Tipping Point” and in “Blink,” cluing us into how trend-setters and snap-decisions shape society. He made millions and became a “rock star” on the speaking circuit.

Now, Malcolm Gladwell is taking on success itself, in a new book called “Outliers.” He’s looking at how society and culture determine who we are, and in particular, what accounts for super-success — for the outsized success of superstars.

It’s not what you may think, he says. Not genes or bootstrap grit. There’s a whole ecology to it, he says. Time Magazine calls his new book “a frontal assault on the great American myth of the self-made man.”

This hour, On Point: Malcolm Gladwell, on the ecology of success.

You can join the conversation. How do you read success and its ingredients? How much is in our genes? How much is in our families? Our culture? Our luck?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for The New Yorker and bestselling author of “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference” and “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.” His new book, out this week, is “Outliers: The Story of Success.”

Read an excerpt from “Outliers” that appeared recently in The Guardian.