Revisionist History

By Pushkin Industries

Society & Culture History

What's Revisionist History about?

Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past—an event, a person, an idea, even a song—and asks whether we got it right the first time. From Pushkin Industries. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.
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LAST EPISODE

This Is Your Captain Speaking

11.16.2023

What does a pilot sound like? Malcolm and Ben Naddaff-Hafrey take off on a long, strange investigation that takes them from Las Vegas to Family Guy to the airspace over the Mojave desert and the cold waters of the Hudson ...

Revisionist History episodes:

11.16.2023 This Is Your Captain Speaking What does a pilot sound like? Malcolm and Ben Naddaff-Hafrey take off on a long, strange investigation that takes them from Las Vegas to Family Guy to the airspace over the Mojave desert and the cold waters of the Hudson ...
11.14.2023 Generative AI: Its Rise and Potential for Society In order to stay competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace, businesses need to adapt to the potential of generative AI. In this special live episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell is joined onstage at iHeartMedia’s studio by Dr. ...
11.02.2023 The Bear Was Poked With Maria Konnikova Maria Konnikova returns as Revisionist History’s ombudsman. Today, she talks with Malcolm about assault rifles, tales of the two Matt Dillons, moral hazard, localized mortgage rates, and possible solutions to America’s gun problem. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
10.31.2023 Oil and Blood: The Osage Murders from Cautionary Tales Today, we’re bringing you an episode from another Pushkin show, Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford. This episode is based on Killers of the Flower Moon, with permission from its author, David Grann. Minnie Smith grew sick quite suddenly. She had ...
10.26.2023 Unlocking Hidden Potential with Adam Grant Malcolm Gladwell hosts a rollicking live discussion about Adam Grant’s new book, “Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things,” which is available now. They explore why we overemphasize innate talent, how Adam grappled with impostor syndrome as a writer ...
10.19.2023 Silicon Valley on the Couch Why is Silicon Valley where it is? How did a narrow valley in California become the epicenter of the computer age? People usually say it’s because of Stanford, or the weather. But the answer may be something much more … ...
10.05.2023 Guns Part 6: “Sin is the failure to bother to care” Abdullah Pratt grew up in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America, then returned to be an ER doctor in his neighborhood hospital. At the end of Revisionist History’s series on everything Americans get wrong about guns, we offer ...
10.03.2023 Five Burning Travel Questions with Malcolm Gladwell Revisionist History hits the road, courtesy of Airbnb. Malcolm shares some travel tips, including music for poolside relaxation, how to find your way around the Carolinas, and what to do about inclement weather. Then, Di Zock and Michael Specter talk ...
09.28.2023 Guns Part 5: The Footnote At the end of a forgotten study of convicted murderers, the author left a devastating footnote. We travel to an old plantation house outside Montgomery Alabama to hear his story — and what it tells us about American gun violence. ...
09.21.2023 Guns Part 4: Moral Hazard Robert Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullet in 1968, ending his presidential run. Had he been shot today, would he have lived? A what-if story about homicides and medical care and the moral consequences of a world where trauma ...
09.14.2023 Guns Part 3: A Shooting Lesson Malcolm goes to a shooting range in the woods of North Carolina to get a tutorial on the AR-15. It’s scary. It’s ugly. It’s at the center of the gun control debate. But what exactly makes it worse than other ...
09.07.2023 Guns Part 2: Getting out of Dodge The longest running television series of the 20th century was Gunsmoke, a western set in the notorious Dodge City, Kansas. Malcolm sweeps away mountains of legal scholarship to make a bold claim: The simplest explanation for the Supreme’s Court’s puzzling ...
08.31.2023 Guns Part 1: The Sudden Celebrity of Sir John Knight In the battles over gun rights, a shadowy English nobleman from the 17th century has unexpectedly taken center stage. Who was he? What did he do that has — 300 years later — endeared him to a generation of legal ...
08.17.2023 Doctors, Guns, and Money Coming soon – a six-part series from Revisionist History about everything Americans get wrong about guns. The series will air weekly, starting Thursday, August 31st. You can binge listen to all six episodes early and ad-free by subscribing to Pushkin ...
07.27.2023 Taxonomy of the Modern Mystery Story Today, another episode from the Revisionist History Live universe. It's an old fashioned lecture, recorded at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University. Malcolm talks about a totally real thing he made up—a taxonomy of the modern mystery story—with ...
07.06.2023 Acting Out Malcolm talks with Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, host of The Last Archive, about the forgotten origins of a major social science, the missing chapter in Ella Fitzgerald’s life, and what it all has to do with the prison just down the street ...
06.29.2023 A Good Circle This season, Malcolm's covered a lot of the problems in higher education. Today on the show: A solution. A big idea being tested at a little school on the shores of Lake Michigan. A school called Hope College, believe it ...
06.22.2023 Feeling A Bit Attacked with Maria Konnikova Maria Konnikova, Revisionist History’s ombudsman—who's also an author, psychologist and professional poker player—is back for another round. This time she reads letters from the audience on the power of debate, and whether or not certain four letter words belong in ...
06.08.2023 The Pushkin Prize for Egregiously Deceptive Self-Promotion Consider this your invitation to the greatest award show no one’s ever heard of: the Pushkin Prizes, created to honor the giants of the American education system. This year, Malcolm is celebrating one prominent university that decided to play the ...
05.25.2023 The Crisis in Girls’ Sports with Lauren Fleshman and Linda Flanagan In a live conversation taped at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Malcolm and his Martian friend consult athletes Linda Flanagan and Lauren Fleshman on how to level the proverbial playing field. What would they ban from youth ...
05.18.2023 The Mystery of Mastery with Adam Gopnik In a live conversation taped at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Malcolm chats with his old friend and New Yorker magazine colleague, Adam Gopnik, about Adam’s latest book, The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery. In ...
05.03.2023 Introducing: So Many Steves, A New Audiobook from Steve Martin and Pushkin Today, we’re bringing you a preview of Pushkin's new audiobook, “So Many Steves.” Steve Martin is more candid than he’s ever been about his creative life in this engrossing audio-biography centered around a series of conversations recorded over many afternoons ...
04.13.2023 Malcolm Goes to Debate School What do you do after you've been humiliated at the Munk Debates? You call in the A-Team. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
04.06.2023 Higher Animals with Michael Specter Malcolm talks with his old friend, the brilliant science writer Michael Specter, about the future of life on Earth. Michael's response to the Covid-19 pandemic was to create a new audiobook on how the mRNA vaccines have sparked a biotechnology ...
03.16.2023 Started From The Bottom with Justin Richmond Today, we dig into the fascinating life of someone Malcolm knows very well: fellow Pushkin host Justin Richmond. Malcolm and Justin talk about being the product of biracial marriages, surviving racist bullies, and Justin's chance dinner with a megastar that ...
03.09.2023 Rodents and Red Wine with Maria Konnikova Author, psychologist and professional poker player Maria Konnikova joins the show as Revisionist History’s first ombudsman. Maria advocates for the audience, reading letters from listeners and challenging Malcolm on matters great and small. They discuss how iodized salt is changing ...
02.16.2023 A Treat for the Die-Hards Every writer, podcaster and storyteller obsesses about how they begin a story. But they rarely pay enough attention to endings. Nothing matters more. Malcolm and Mike Birbiglia solve endings for you. From our first-ever Revisionist History: LIVE events at the ...
01.26.2023 From Broken Record: Rick Rubin in Conversation with Malcolm Gladwell In which Malcolm reunites with his colleague, friend and fellow host of Broken Record (not to mention a music icon in his own right), Rick Rubin. This month Rick released his first book, called "The Creative Act: A Way Of ...
12.20.2022 The Cadillac LYRIQ: Malcolm Gladwell meets an Electric Icon - Part Two In part two of our special series with Cadillac, we test whether the all-electric Cadillac LYRIQ can keep up with the demands of a 21st-century helicopter parent, put a baby to sleep, and impress a collector of immaculate old-school Caddies. ...
11.29.2022 Clicks, Not Code: Transforming Digital Experiences with Salesforce The Salesforce platform can empower businesspeople to create digital solutions without writing code. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell takes on this topic with Jacob Goldstein, host of What’s Your Problem?, and guest Phil Weinmeister, Head ...
11.22.2022 The Cadillac LYRIQ: Malcolm Gladwell meets an Electric Icon – Part One Not long ago, we got a call at Pushkin Headquarters from Cadillac. They knew that Malcolm takes cars very seriously… so they asked if he’d heard of the all-electric Cadillac LYRIQ and if he’d like to borrow one for a ...
11.15.2022 Unlocking Data Strategy: Data Literacy for Better Business Having a good data strategy can streamline the way a company does business. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell takes on this topic with Ronald Young Jr., host of Solvable, and guest Nicholas Renotte, Data Science ...
11.01.2022 From Inside Voice: Lake Bell and the Sexy Baby Voice Phenomenon Malcolm's friend, actress/writer/director/producer Lake Bell, is obsessed with voice. Malcolm is a little obsessed with Lake. This excerpt from Lake's new Pushkin audiobook Inside Voice: My Obsession with HowWe Sound, showcases Lake and Malcolm's conversation about the phenomenon of the ...
10.25.2022 Combatting Hiring Bias: Recruiting a Diverse Workforce with Intelligent Automation Intelligent automation can help combat the human biases that can lead to discriminatory hiring practices. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell takes on this topic with Jacob Goldstein, host of What’s Your Problem?, and guest Angela ...
10.20.2022 The Creative Power of Misfits Sharing something from our friends at the TED Audio Collective—an episode of WorkLife with Adam Grant. Adam talks about harnessing the power of frustrated people to shake up the status quo — just like Pixar did. If you'd like to ...
10.06.2022 The Mennonite National Anthem Lester Glick’s year in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment cost him his hoped-for career and also left him with an eating disorder for the rest of his life. But like many of the other volunteers, he said he would have done ...
09.29.2022 The Rise of the Guinea Pigs The Minnesota Starvation Experiment could never be done today. No scientist could get permission to starve 36 healthy people for close to a year. But why? Revisionist History tries to follow the strange logic that governs our thinking about medical ...
09.22.2022 The Department of Physiological Hygiene In the final year of the Second World War, 36 men spent a year in a dingy set of rooms under the University of Minnesota football stadium. They were part of an experiment none of them would ever forget. What ...
09.15.2022 Outliers, Revisited Did Malcolm Gladwell blow it in his bestselling book Outliers? What if all he did was write a primer for neurotic helicopter parents? To find out, Revisionist History descends on the University of Pennsylvania to run a roomful of eager ...
09.12.2022 We’re Back … With More Experiments! Revisionist History returns on September 15th with a saga about self-sacrifice. Plus, Malcolm offers a mea culpa for an unintended consequence of a chapter he wrote in Outliers. If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from ...
08.19.2022 Tim Harford Cools Us Down This Summer We’ll be back in September with new episodes of Revisionist History. In the meantime, I got to sit down with my good friend and host of Cautionary Tales, Tim Harford. We discuss his recent trilogy about the epic race between ...
07.28.2022 “I Was A Stranger and You Welcomed Me” Malcolm tells the story of how his parents and their friends sponsored three Vietnamese refugees, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. And wonders: do we underestimate the value of ordinary acts of kindness? If you’d like to keep up ...
07.21.2022 When Will Met Grace You thought the antics of Will, Grace, Jack and Karen were just harmless fun. Oh please. Revisionist History dives deep into a television sitcom that you may not have realized even had a deep end. If you’d like to keep ...
07.14.2022 Star Struck A legendary Hollywood mogul, a famous author, a fatal drunk driving accident, and a brilliant bit of screenwriting, left on the cutting room floor. Revisionist History engages in a pop culture what-if experiment about the 1937 version of A Star ...
07.07.2022 In Triplicate A mystery that begins with the half-baked idea of an obscure California bureaucrat in the 1930’s and ends with one of the worst public crises in American history. Chicken Little said the sky was falling. And sometimes Chicken Little is ...
06.30.2022 Way to Go, Ohio A century ago, a mysterious and disfiguring disease was finally cured by an experiment in Akron, Ohio . . . with a condiment. We ask: it is time to return to Akron, and try the same trick again? Ay, oh, ...
06.30.2022 The Magic Wand Experiment What if you could design any experiment you wanted? Without worrying about money, ethics, logistics, or even the laws of nature? Revisionist History kicks off the season by giving some of the world’s smartest scientists a magic wand to create ...
06.16.2022 Revisionist History Season 7: The Experiment Experience Revisionist History is back! And obsessed with ... experiments. Natural experiments. Thought experiments. Failed experiments. Experiments that end up in salt factories and file drawers filled with carbon copies. Not to mention experimental endings to Hollywood classics and a deep ...
06.14.2022 Relax and Win from Legacy of Speed Sharing a new Pushkin show, Legacy of Speed. When two Black sprinters raised their fists in protest at the 1968 Olympic Games, it shook the world. More than 50 years later, the ripple effects of their activism are still felt. ...
05.18.2022 An Ode to the BMW M5: From Car Show! with Eddie Alterman Malcolm confesses to being an absolute car nut. And now his dream has come true — the launch of a car show at Pushkin. Car Show! is hosted by Eddie Alterman, the longtime editor of Car and Driver. On Car ...

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