Malcolm Gladwell on the Beatles - Prodigies or Not? January 24, 2009

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/01/15/Malcolm_Gladwell_at_City_Arts__Lectures

Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell uses The Beatles as an example to question the existence of genuine musical prodigies. He attributes a large measure of the band's success to the experience they gained while playing as the house band for a strip club in Hamburg, Germany.

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Readers of Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker articles, reviews, and profiles know him to be an author of wide-ranging curiosity about the world and the way it works. His choice of subject matter ranges from the psychology of athletes in pressure situations to the salesman who masterminded the popularity of the George Foreman Grill.

What sets Gladwell's writing apart is his use of research in fields such as epidemiology, behavioral psychology, and other social sciences. His ability to incorporate ideas from these fields in a manner that is both relevant and understandable makes Gladwell a unique, cutting-edge journalist.

In his most recent work, Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell explores what makes the most famous and successful individuals different. Throughout the book, Gladwell's intelligence and fresh perspective synthesize divergent ideas in order to make a broader point about the way our culture works - City Arts & Lectures

Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker since 1996. From 1987 to 1996, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business, science, and then served as the newspaper's New York City bureau chief. He is the author of three books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference; Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking; and Outliers: The Story of Success.