In 2000 Malcolm Gladwell, a New Yorker journalist,  published Tipping Point. Sold almost 2 million copies of the book and since then has been subjected to extreme jealousy and imitation by all more qualified, more rigorous academicians.

Tipping Point talks about sudden widespread diffusion of ideas. In sociology there have been several attempts to study the phenomenon of diffusion of new ideas across people.

However, I came across something quite interesting while watching an extremely entertaining musical comedy, ‘Love me Tonight‘ (1932), directed by Rouben Mamoulian, one of the most innovative Movie Directors ever. The video embedded below is a wonderful example of ‘Diffusion’. It shows wonderfully how a song that was born in a conversation ends up reaching the army, and eventually the princess.

And the song is great! If you don’t start humming the tune after watching the video, I’ll pay your money back. So enjoy the video, while I go back to envying Gladwell.