Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lynton and Joshua Steiner in Conversation: From Mistakes to Meaning

Join Michael Lynton, former CEO of Sony Entertainment, and Joshua Steiner, former US Treasury Department Chief of Staff, for a conversation with Malcolm Gladwell about transforming failure into discovery — and Lynton and Steiner's new book, From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn't Own You.

We all make mistakes. Longtime friends Michael Lynton and Joshua Steiner made mistakes that shaped their careers and lives, but it wasn't until the isolation of the pandemic that they began to open up to each other about them. When Lynton was the CEO of Sony Entertainment, he greenlit the film that led to the infamous North Korean hack; meanwhile, a private diary Steiner had kept as Chief of Staff at the Treasury Department became a focal point in the Clinton Whitewater scandal. As their conversations deepened and they searched for a book to guide their exploration, they decided to write one themselves. From Mistakes to Meaning themselves is an examination of their own stories and with candid interviews with influential figures such as Joanna Coles and Malcolm Gladwell — unveiling the hidden dimensions of mistakes and the universal struggle to move beyond them.

In a candid conversation about how our personalities drive mistakes and how mistakes shape our lives, hear Gladwell, Lynton and Steiner discuss the difference between failures and mistakes, the stages of mistakes, and how it's possible to break the patterns that lead to misunderstandings and shame — turning mistakes into portals for personal growth.