Key ideas from Malcolm Gladwell

• "The history of the death penalty in America is really about making execution more acceptable to watch, not more humane for the condemned" - Malcolm
• Lethal injection causes death by burning lungs with acidic blood while paralytics prevent screaming, not peaceful sedation as believed for 40 years
• OxyContin crisis resulted from targeting just 2,000 doctors out of hundreds of thousands who would prescribe without restraint, demonstrating asymmetrical contagion
• "Everything's asymmetrical now - 5% of infected population does 90% of the work in spreading ideas and disease" - Malcolm
• Parental attribution error: we blame parents for our flaws but rarely credit them for our strengths, externalizing bad while internalizing good
• Elite Ivy League schools give equal or larger admissions breaks to athletes than to historically disadvantaged minorities, prioritizing tennis over racial justice