The tipping point, in Malcolm Gladwell’s formula, is the moment when a notion becomes a fad, when a trend becomes a phenomenon, when a curiously small change has a very big effect.
When, for example, frumpy footwear from the ’50s and ’60s, Hush Puppies, come back as a 90s rage. When rising street crime drives all social life indoors-or when falling street crime, as in Brooklyn recently, prompts a sudden revival of stickball and bicycle traffic and stoop sitting. When retail sales of cheap fax machines, or cell phones, rocket into the millions.
When an idea becomes infectious, like a yawn, or like a virus. Malcolm Gladwell’s question is why some ideas, some behaviors, too, become epidemics. His answers-the kind of social commentary that has made Malcolm Gladwell something of a phenomenon-turn on what he calls the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Conext.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.”