He = Banesh Hoffman

This is tangentially similar to Malcolm Gladwell's claim that standardized testing for law school privileges certain types of thinkers over others, something which creates thinkers who are good at quick things with respect to time pressures rather than slower and more deliberate thinkers who are needed at higher level functions like the Supreme Court.

See: The Tortoise and the Hare, S4 E2 of Revisionist History https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-tortoise-and-the-hare

testing imagination versus fact memorization/simple recall compared with thinking quickly under pressure or slowly with time and increased ability to reason

How might this leadership happen within the social epidemic view of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point framework?

• the law of the few,
• the stickiness factor, and
• the power of context

and with respect to mavens, connectors, and salespeople?

Your observations here ring true to me. They're also supported by similar observations by Malcolm Gladwell in chapters 8 and 9 (I believe) of Miracle and Wonder. There he's got stories of Wilt Chamberlain and Paul Simon which provide additional examples though he's also attributing some of the success to memory and the idea of situational awareness. He quotes his own researcher there who makes some comments on short versus long artistic careers and how they relate to creativity and longevity. See also this "zettel": https://hypothes.is/a/Kd7X4lvPEe250Gvn57Pbdg

Gladwell, Malcolm, Bruce Hedlam, and Paul Simon. Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. Audiobook. Pushkin Industries, 2021. https://amzn.to/3ENU32D

In Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, Malcolm Gladwell comments on the prodigious memories of both Paul Simon with respect to sounds and Lebron James with respect to basketball game play.

Where these sorts of situational memories built and exercised over time or were they natural gifts? Or perhaps natural gifts that were also finely tuned over time?

https://www.aei.org/articles/what-malcolm-gladwell-gets-wrong-about-poverty/

What creates "strong families"? It's definitely more than a two-parent household. Economic and social support are highly helpful as well as a myriad of other factors.

Watch the potential for subtle right leaning bias here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute#Political_stance_and_impact

This seems to fall back on the trope of "two-parent families are the natural state" when in reality, since the late 80's one's chances are better with a two-parent, two-income family which provides far greater stability. His argument here is conflating multiple complex items, an issue he takes with Gladwell himself.

Why not peel apart this two-parent claim the same way? I suspect he may be nodding to the single-earner two-parent mode, but how prevalent is this in American culture now? What other pieces also underpin this? And is it different by state, by race, by culture, etc.

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Million-Dollar Murray.” The New Yorker, February 5, 2006. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/million-dollar-murray (.pdf copy available at https://housingmatterssc.org/million-dollar-murray/)

Link to: - plateau effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plateau_effect, also described in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule

Knowing a little of what is coming in advance here, I can't help but thinking: How can this riot theory potentially be used to influence politics and/or political campaigns? It could be particularly effective to get people "riled up" just before a particular election to create a political riot of sorts and thereby influence the outcome.

Facebook has done several social experiments with elections in showing that their friends and family voted and thereby affecting other potential voters. When done in a way that targets people of particular political beliefs to increase turn out, one is given a means of drastically influencing elections. In some sense, this is an example of this "Riot Theory".

I'm reminded here of Malcolm Gladwell's thesis about helping the masses rather than the edge cases. see also: https://boffosocko.com/2018/05/01/episode-06-my-little-hundred-million-revisionist-history/

Really? These aren’t uncontroversial, to say the least. For instance, discussion board interactions often call for careful, mixed-method work with an eye to preventing instructor effect and confirmation bias. “Time on task” is almost a codeword for distinctions between models of learning. Research in cognitive science gives very nuanced value to “time spent on task” while the Malcolm Gladwells of the world usurp some research results. A major insight behind Competency-Based Education is that it can allow for some variance in terms of “time on task”. So it’s kind of surprising that this summary puts those two things to the fore.