Famed author Malcolm Gladwell said the 2020s are a much less optimistic decade than the late 1990s, when he began writing his first book, “The Tipping Point,” an examination of how ideas spread and societies can quickly change.

The turn of the century was a time of economic prosperity that coincided with the decline of many social problems, Gladwell said, and his debut captured that zeitgeist.

"I wrote a book about the ways we could leverage the extraordinary moment we were in," he said. "And then 25 years passed and I decide to revisit the idea, and it's just impossible to be optimistic in the same way."

Speaking in front of few hundred fans on Oct. 29 at the Baldwin & Co. bookstore in Faubourg Marigny, the journalist and podcaster said the opioid epidemic, the anti-vaccine movement an

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