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Malcolm Gladwell remembers Lois Weisberg, Chicago's cultural 'connector'

Everybody knew Lois. Malcolm Gladwell remembers Lois Weisberg, the Chicago gadabout who inspired "The Tipping Point."
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Screenshot of Lois Weisberg, Chicago's cultural connector. (ChicagoCulturalEvents/YouTube)
As It Happens9:34Malcolm Gladwell remembers Lois Weisberg, Chicago's cultural 'connector'

You may not have known Lois Weisberg. But chances are you know, and probably marvel at, someone like Lois Weisberg.

She was the kind of person writer Malcolm Gladwell dubbed a connector. A Chicago cultural fixture, a mover and shaker, Weisberg was friends with everybody. She died on Jan. 13, at age 90. Gladwell attended her funeral last week.

"You saw people from every single corner of Chicago and that was her genius," Gladwell tells As It Happens host Carol Off. "It was a celebration of an extraordinary life."

Staff writer, New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell attends the 2015 New Yorker Festival “Wrap Party” on October 3, 2015 in New York City. Gladwell remembers Lois Weisberg as a "connector" and the hub on which Chicago's cultural scene revolved. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The New Yorker)

Weisberg's connective skills inspired the popular New Yorker profile by Gladwell, called Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg. Gladwell went on to make her a key figure in his book, The Tipping Point, where he expanded on this theory of 'connectors'.

Malcolm Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point," inspired by Lois Weisberg. (Little, Brown and Company/gladwell.com)

"Most of us occupy one or two, or three at most, social circles," Gladwell explains. "But it's very rare to find someone who occupies more than three or four. Lois occupied at least a dozen."

Gladwell rhymes off stories of Weisberg's run-ins with Lenny Bruce, Thelonious Monk, Allen Ginsberg and Keith Richards. But despite the fact her rolodex was filled with a who's who of 60s and 70s popular culture, Gladwell insists Weisberg was never caught up in the celebratory. She had other agendas.

Weisberg put her social connections to work, serving as Chicago's commissioner of cultural affairs for more than two decades, after five years of work as director of the mayor's office of special events. But Gladwell says Weisberg's reach extends far beyond these titles. She hobnobbed "with lawyers, with railway buffs, with jazz musicians, with rock stars, comedians, writers, politicians of every stripe, antique dealers — there was no part of Chicago that she didn't have a connection to."

Lois Weisberg was a legendary and influential figure in Chicago's arts and culture scene. Weisberg died earlier this month, at age 90. (Wikipedia)

"She was a real activist on many levels so she was constantly recruiting people to her causes," Gladwell explains. "She just thought people were interesting and if they had skills they should be put to work."

"People like Lois represent this third kind of power, this soft power which I think we overlook," Gladwell reasons."Lois had no political power and zero economic power [...] but she accomplished an enormous amount, purely on the strength of the relationships she built and the alliances she forged over the course of her lifetime, and I think that in every successful community there are people like that and they are largely hidden to view."

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