Malcom Gladwell on Larry King Live

I ended up down a Malcom Gladwell rabbit hole the other day, which resulted in some interviews with him playing in the background while I worked and I liked this:

A special kind of insight comes from distance...I think we’re really reluctant to re-examine our conclusions about the past. There’s so much to be learned by simply going back and saying “we made up our mind about this [thing] that happened”, boom, the day after it happened. And then we just let it sit there and never went back to say, “well, was I right?” There are all kinds of things you can learn, years later, that can fundamentally change your understanding of history and how you reach your own conclusions.

Then later:

It brings to mind that famous epigram “history is written by the victors.” And that’s true. The account that you get in the first go-round is written by the guy who won. So one of the reasons it’s so important to go back and look at history again is you have to give other people a chance to speak. People are willing to be honest with the passage of time.