You are right. The stories are fantastic and he really makes the underlying research shine. I can see LLM + Human working great for that kind of writing.

LLM writes the first draft, human makes it sing.

Well, Gladwell constructs great stories out of a very selective reading of research. Not that many writers don't do this to some degree, but Gladwell in his more recent career has been widely criticized for picking specific research and constructing a compelling narrative from it as opposed to telling a more nuanced tale.