Outliers: The Story of Success (Pt. 3)

Hello and welcome to Readers, a podcast where the real-life lessons and applications of books are talked about by a 16-year-old, me, Prithviraj Chavda. Welcome back to Readers, everyone. We've taken quite a long break from this podcast for a while, but now we're back to it. I have with me Mr. Neil Patel. It's great to have you here, man.

Great to be back. Great to be on the podcast again.

Yeah. And, and, and we're here to discuss chapters 6 and 7 in part 3 of Outliers. So in the last couple of episodes, right, we discussed a lot of circumstances that can help shape your journey, including location, family structure, and even ethnicity. Today we're gonna be talking a lot about cultural balances and cultural influences. So without further ado, let's get into it. So the beginning of this chapter, Chapter 6, starts with, as usual, a story. This story starts in the setting of a small Kentucky town by the name of Harlan, founded by 8 immigrant families. The beginning of this chapter talks about how the grandsons of those 2 major leaders in this town started a feud against each other, killing many of their friends and family in the process.

So yeah, these two families— one family was the Howards and the other family was the Turners. So the essence that you kind of alluded to about the killing spree between the two families, it started when the two grandsons of the— those founding families, after a game of poker, they fought each other, and because one of them thought the other cheated, right? So after that incident Bob, who is the grandson of William Turner, was killed in a gunfight between the two grandsons. And then after that, that set off a chain reaction of pretty much all hell breaking loose. So even after that, the violence didn't stop with the Howards home being attacked by the Turners and then one of the friends being involved. So this continues and it essentially ties back to what we're gonna essentially go into the conversation about, which is the culture of honor. And these, both these families, they come from like a Scottish-Irish origin. And from that origin, there's a lot of, um, the way they handle fights, it's very like hands-on and it's an aggressive culture.

Yeah, exactly. Um, and we're gonna tie back to that real quick, but just before we do, um, the author actually makes a note here in the book to mention that this situation, right, it doesn't seem very complex, right? Two families don't like each other, they had an argument, something happened, somebody accused another of cheating and they fought. But the author also mentions that things become a lot clearer when you look at these stories from a different perspective. So he says that first of all, the two families, the Howards and the Turners, were not the only ones feuding during this time. The author mentions many such instances, such as the Appa— which specifically happened along the Appalachians. "And many of these include the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the French-Eversole feud, the Baker-Howard feud, and over 1,000 more." So through this, we see that this isn't just a couple of family feuds, right? It's turned into a pattern of over 1,000, and all of these happened in very identical towns with very identical feuds along the exact same mountain range. So here, the author kind of ask this question: why did this happen?

So that essentially what, that what was mentioned before, this culture of honor, especially with these early settler settlers, was essentially how Gladwell kind of defines it, is the need to aggressively protect one's reputation at all costs because, quote unquote, a man's reputation is the center of his livelihood. And self-worth. And this culture of honor is definitely extreme in the sense of like there's killings. And when he kind of was alluding to these stories between these two families, what I thought about was how in Japan there's also that culture of honor where like with a sword they would, you know, if they lost a battle and they didn't want to go back to their families, instead of like, you know, having that guilt and shame, they would just kill themselves. Where in that instance, their culture of honor was a little bit obviously different from what the one that Gladwell's talking about, but it's a— the culture of honor is, um, definitely, you know, is it tied to people's self-worth essentially?

Oh yeah, for sure. And like, you think about stuff like, you know, the Japan incident you just mentioned, right? And you think of something like all these feuds, right, that happened so long ago, and it may not seem applicable today, but in reality, right, we see them all around us. These are the places where it seems acceptable for murdering somebody for an insult, right, where people die over so many feuds like this. And, you know, I'll give an example that's much less severe and a lot, a lot less severe than this, you know, but even being on, on the basketball court, right, just playing basketball and somebody makes a tough shot over you and, you know, says something like, oh, you can't guard me. And like that right there is, you know, you see that culture of honor kicking in a little bit. And that's what starts these arguments and, you know, these brawls and these fights and stuff, which you see at such a bigger, such a bigger scale over here, right? But essentially, right, this culture of honor states that the exact geographical locations that you're actually from matters a lot in your life, which I thought was really cool because if you look at the people in the Appalachians who ended up doing this, these are all people who were actually born in areas that were a lot less, that were a lot more rural and were basically from the lowlands, right? So these are very rougher, much rougher, stronger people. They're prepared to employ violence whenever they felt that their livelihood was threatened. And the author goes into a lot more detail about how their occupations played a role in that, but essentially stating that, you know, these people felt like if their honor was threatened, if they were given an insult to, then, you know, that was the end, right? You need to get that person back. That person needs to pay, or, you know, I'm the one who's going to have to pay, basically.

Yeah. And like before we move on to the next point, like another thing while you're talking that kind of jumped into my head was even when we look at like the political landscape and the geopolitical tensions that are happening in the world today, a lot of that is related to culture of honor, right? Whether it's America's culture of honor or Russia's culture of honor. Right. So if any words are said between two countries and there's a lot of tension between them, that alone can cause a lot of people to lose their lives, right? So these leaders, they're essentially like leading us, but, and their ramifications are on us. But what they say and do has an impact on us. And that's essentially like a modern-day, you know, similar to basketball example, a culture of honor example. So after Gladwell kind of introduces, you know, this family and he starts to relate it to modern day, right? He's trying to say, okay, what does the culture of honor play in a role of, you know, with the theme of the book, right? Outliers and, you know, the people who achieve success. So what— you could go into a little bit of this background.

Yeah, yeah. So he talks about, he introduces a new story here, right? Which is in the 1990s, he talks about two psychologists, Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett. And these two decided to experiment on the culture of honor, specifically on young men. So they had two different experiments that they did. The first was that they had a group walk down a hallway where they would, unavoidably bump into one of these experimenters. And as they did this, the experimenter would say, you know, in a low voice, but very, you know, they can hear it, a curse word basically directed towards them. And then the two psychologists would see, you know, they would kind of gauge based off of how they looked and different samples that they took, they would see the anger reflected in their faces, right? They would see how much firmer their grip got. And they even compared saliva samples to see if this caused their testosterone and cortisol levels to go up. And you know, the crazy thing about this was that, you know, their emotional security or their social status, things that, you know, you hear a lot about now, this didn't really have much playing factor in this. What really mattered in this study at least was where they were from. Most of the people from the northern part of the US either laughed it off or it didn't really affect them. However, it was the complete opposite with the Southerners and their cortisol and testosterone levels spiked. So the author then kind of goes into the second experiment that they did. They put the exact same group one at a time in a narrow hallway again with another experimenter. This experimenter was 6'3", 250 pounds, and a former college football player who was now a bouncer, basically a, a big guy. And the question was, What they were trying to see was how close do these students, these young men, get to the bouncer before they move out the way. And the author actually says something kind of funny here, and he's like, they will get out the way, right? Because this is like this big guy, you're not going to just walk into him. So he says for the Northerners, it was pretty simple. They moved away around 6 feet out. However, for the Southerners, it was very different. Right. Under normal circumstances, the Southerners were stepping aside with more than 9 feet to go. But if they had just been insulted, it was less than 2, which is, which is crazy, right? What are your thoughts on this?

I mean, I mean, it just goes into this idea of how, you know, that the idea of that cultural honor that we keep on alluding to, that, you know, it does play an impact on how things turn out.

Yeah, and, and the author also introduces one last question here. Um, he says these Southern students, especially the ones that they used in this study, these are kids of upper-class parents. They're not from the mountains of Appalachia, right? They're not the people from those lowlands who had to struggle and had to breed cattle to make a living for themselves. These are privileged, for the most part, kids who have wealthier parents. So this is where the big question kind of arises. Why are the kids acting the same as their ancestors hundreds of years ago? And this is where the author closes out the chapter with a wrap-up of previous lessons learned, right? We've so far learned about the advantages of where and when you are born, what your parents' occupations are, and what your upbringing was. These are things we discussed in the previous episodes, but now we're gonna look at how the traditions, attitudes, and behaviors of our cultural legacies can impact our success at a great level. And here we move on to Chapter 7, which once again starts off with a series of stories. So these stories are a little different, right? They're not the typical ones that he usually starts with, but these are starting with some more tragic stories. and this is about a series of plane accidents for the airline Korean Air. This is one incident, uh, there's one incident that he mentions about a plane hitting a mountain. He also talks about one that was shot down by Soviet jets after wandering into Russian territory, and another one that was lost over an island and went down at sea. All these events kind of occurred over the time period of 1988 to 1998, right? Um, and he talks about how for Korean Air, this period was really not good. And to put that into perspective, the loss rate during this time period for Korean Air was over 17 times more than that of any other airline, such as, you know, United. And due to these accidents, Delta faced a number of problems. They lost their flight partnerships, their safety rating degraded, and they almost lost overflight and landing privileges in Canadian airspace. So by this point, uh, Korea's president gave a speech to the world. He said, "The issue of Korean Air is not a matter of an individual company, but a matter of the whole country. Our country's credibility is at stake." So he also switched the presidential airline, um, from Korean Air to its competitor, which is a big deal. So now the author brings in one, uh, very interesting point, and he says, After this incident, Korean Air became a top airline. They were one of the safest airlines in the world today, and they have a spotless safety record since 1999, which is a year after all of these things went down. They were even given an award to recognize the tremendous transformation that they undertook. So how did they do it?

So, so Gladwell kind of brings to attention that most of these crashes that do occur They happen with poor weather, a behind-schedule flight, a sleep-deprived pilot, and the flight will likely consist of two pilots who have never previously flown together. So the Korean Air had a— had cultural legacy, and you could see this from the cockpit voice recorder. So the conversation that is happening between the pilot and the co-pilot would be You know, the co-pilot would be very subordinate to the main pilot. So when he would respond, he would not be as aggressive as, say, an American pilot would be to their superior. I think culturally speaking, they wanted to be respectful and not to question that authority. So that just kind of goes into the fact that communication for any, you know, two pilots that are flying together, regardless of rank, is super important. And there was a story of a flight that was flying at nighttime around New York City that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. And the reason that was, was because culturally those pilots were, I believe, from Colombia or some Southern American country where that, you know, you know, they didn't really communicate or say things directly as American pilots would. Right? So what— when, um, the co-pilot was talking to the air traffic control and he knew that his plane was low on fuel, he did not make it seem that they had to be the first in line to land. So if he kind of told the air traffic control like, hey, my fuel is really low, we need to land immediately, instead of just going beating around the bush and only acknowledge it acknowledging that the fuel was low, you know, that whole plane could have been saved and all those lives could have been saved.

Yeah, and this is really cool to me because he really talks about the impact and effect of language on all of these workers, right? He talks about how the copilot and the pilot have to work together and how both of them have to be willing to give instructions and receive instructions. And as somebody who's, you know, really interested in all of this organizational psychology, this really stood out to me because as a good— to be a great leader, you know, to be a great worker, you have to be willing to listen and you have to be willing to speak when it's your time. And I thought that was just really cool because when you see such tragedies like this, it happens only when people are, you know, and he introduces his term, which he calls mitigated speech. Which is essentially downplaying something, which is basically like, you know, instead of saying, hey, you need to check out the fuel meter, we're about to crash. Hey, do you wanna take a look at the fuel? Maybe we might not have enough, right? There's a sense of urgency in that tone and you can tell the difference. So I think that that was really cool to me and that really stuck out because I think that you have to assert that dominance whenever you feel like there are lives at stake, whenever there's things like, that are very important. And the other people with you who are working with you have to be willing to listen. The author, of course, says that mitigation is useful in a non-stressful situation, right? If you're just at an office, you have to have something checked, you have to have something finished. You know, even at school, I would be able to tell you if I need somebody to look through my work before I submit it, I would just ask them to take a look through it over the weekend, maybe. But when it's something that is that serious, you need to be able to assert that. So yeah, I'll let you take it over from here.

You know, while you were talking, it kind of reminded me of like a quote I actually like read today, and it was by Simon Sinek, right? And what he essentially said is like, when people feel safe enough to raise their hands and say, I made a mistake or I need help, That means like the leader has created an environment where people feel safe to be themselves, right? And this kind of ties into like leadership and communication and all these different things that are important, you know, for a successful flight. And the one of the last things that Malcolm Gladwell mentions within his, you know, this chapter is like this concept of a power distance index. And what these things do, this like index, it kind of shows how likely, you know, someone who is superior, I mean inferior to their superior in an organization is likely to push back against that authority. And what he noticed that, and you know, it doesn't make, you know, it's not illogical is that Americans voice themselves, right? Culturally speaking, Americans are not afraid to state what's on their mind, whereas sometimes in Eastern cultures or, you know, the Southern American cultures, it's that power distance is more higher. And that's what leads to like a lot of these plane crashes.

Yeah. And I really like— so the way that— and I don't know if we're doing a perfect job of this, but the way the author really says it in the book there's no, you know, sense of bias from his end, right? He really states it as it is with a lot of evidence to back it up and the research that he's done based off of different cultural identities. Um, and it's been really interesting because he states how whether you're a part of an organization as a leader or as just a worker, you know, you have a special role that you're playing and you have to be aware of different people's cultural backgrounds and the way that they've lived up till then to not judge everybody the same, right? You have to be aware of everybody's rate of growth and you have to be willing to speak up when you need it the most as well as listen. So this was a, this was a really amazing two chapters for me. And this brings us to the end of chapter 7 of Outliers. So today we've learned a lot of things, right? We've learned the importance of cultural legacies. We've learned about mitigation in language, and we've learned the effect that your language can have. And we've also learned something that was really amazing to me about this culture of honor. And we've seen how cultural backgrounds can tend to influence your behaviors and tendency even hundreds of years later. So you guys might notice we're closing this episode a little early today. Um, there's about 2 chapters left, and we would rather end a little early than take another 30 minutes of your guys' time. So instead of our usual 3-part series, we're gonna do a 4-part series for this book. Um, so we're so excited to be back. Uh, thank you guys for the wait. Um, and we'll be uploading part 4 of Outliers very soon. Thank you so much for being here, Neil.

Thank you.

And thank you everybody who's listening. Um, we hope you enjoyed today's episode, and don't forget to keep learning, keep changing, and keep growing. We'll see you next time.