Pushkin. Hello, there are Pushkin listeners. This is Malcolm Gladwell. I'm the president of Pushkin Industries and host of Revisionist History. But I'm here today as an author. I've written half a dozen books, such as Outliers and Blink, but my new book, The Bomber Mafia is something different. First, it's a work of history, telling the story of how a new technology, air power upended the nature of modern warfare during the Second World War. It's also the first book I wrote to be heard rather than read. You can get the print version of The Bomber Mafia wherever you usually get your books. And I love my readers, but I urge you to listen. The Bomber Mafia is not your typical audio book. I didn't record it in a booth, solitary and bedantic. I worked with a whole team of sound engineers, researchers, editors, musicians, wizards of every kind. They were building the mightiest aircraft in history. I mean, would you rather I just read some torpid, ruddily nonsense like the B twenty nine bomber droned on through the night sky, or would you rather hear it for yourself? And the assembled airmen will listen to words that a few years ago would have been fantastic, but today rolle casually off a briefing officer's lips. The Taga gentleman is Japan. When I was researching, I went to Maxwell Air Force Base to dig through a mountain of tapes interviews with some of the most important military figures of the Second World War. These were the voices of people I'd only ever read about in history books. Suddenly they all came alive inside my head. It was magical, and it reminded me why I do what I do. We've devised an easy way for you to listen to the Bomber Mafia in the same player you're using to hear this podcast. Go to Bomber Mafia dot com and enter your email and payment method. You'll receive an email shortly after payment. Open it and follow the easy instructions to add the Bomber Mafia to your podcast app. I'm about to play you a piece of the Bomber Mafia audiobo Queer. I think it'll explain why I wrote it, and I hope you'll hear the magic. As a little boy lying in his bed, my father would hear the plains overhead on their way in then in the small hours of the morning, heading back to Germany. This was in England, in Kent, a few miles south and east of London. My father was born in nineteen thirty four, which meant he was five when the Second World War broke out. Kent was called bomb Alley by the British because it was the English county that German warplanes would fly over on their way to London. It was not uncommon in those years that if a bomber missed its target or had bombs left over, it would simply drop them anywhere on the return trip. One day, a stray bomb landed in my grandparents back garden. It didn't explode, It just sat there, half buried in the ground. And I think it's fair to say that if you were a five year old boy with an interest in things mechanical, a German bomb sitting unexploded in your backyard would have been just about the most extraordinary experience imaginable, Not that my father described it that way. My dad was a mathematician and an Englishman, which is to say that the language of emotion was not his first language. Rather, it was like Latin or French, something which one could study and understand but never fully master. Now that an unexploded German bomb in your backyard would be the most extraordinary experience imaginable for a five year old was my interpretation when my father told me that story of the bomb when I was five years old. That was in the late nineteen sixties. We were living in England then in Southampton. Reminders of what the country had gone through were still everywhere. If you went to London you could still tell where the bombs had landed, wherever a hideous brutalius building had sprouted up on some sentries old block. Here they come, they come an absolute steep dive and you can see that bombs actually leave the machine and coming to Walter. You can hear our own guns going like anything now. BBC Radio was always on in our house, and in those days it seemed like every second interview was with an old general or power trooper, a prisoner of war. We shall prove out he once like any and our island home ride out on the war. The first short story I wrote as a kid was about how Hitler was actually still alive and coming for England again. I sent it to my grandmother, the one in Kent who'd had the unexploded bomb in the back garden. When my mother heard about my story, she admonished me someone who lived through the war might not enjoy a plot line about Hitler's return. She reminded me. My father once took me and my brothers to a beach overlooking the English Channel. We crawled together through the remnants of an old world word too fortification. I still remember the thrill of wondering if we would come across some old bullets, or a shell casing, or even the skeleton of some long lost German spy who'd washed up on shore. I don't think we lose our childhood fascinations. I know I didn't. One day a few years back, I was looking at my book shelves and realized, to my surprise, just how many non fiction books about war I had accumulated. The big history bestsellers, but also the specialty histories, out of print, memoirs, academic texts, and what part of the war were most of these books about bombing air Power by Stephen Boudiansky, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare by Tammy Biddell, Decision over Schweinfurt by Thomas Coffee whole shelves of these histories. Usually when I start accumulating books like that, it's because I want to write something about the subject. I have shelves of books on social psychology because I've made my living writing about social psychology. But I never really wrote much about war, especially not the Second Wold War, or more specifically air power. Just bits and pieces here and there. Why. I don't know. I imagine that a Freudian would have fun with that question. But maybe the simpler answer is that the more a subject matters to you, the harder it is to find a story you want to tell about it. The bar is higher, which brings us to The Bomber Mafia, the audio book you are listening to now. I'm happy to say that with The Bomber Mafia, I've found a story worthy of my obsession. One last thing about the use of that last word, obsession. This book is a service to my obsessions, but it's also a story about other people's obsessions, about one of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century. I realize when I look at the things I've written about or explored over the years that I'm drawn again and again to obsessives. I like them. I liked the idea that someone could push away all the concerns and details that make up everyday life and just zero in on one thing, the thing that fits the contours of their imagination. Obsessives lead us astray, sometimes lack the bigger picture, serve not just the worlds but their own narrow interests. But I also don't think we get progress, or innovation, or joy or beauty without obsessives. When I was reporting this book, I had dinner with the then Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, David Goldfein. It was at the air House on the grounds of Fort Myer in northern Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, d C. A Grand Victorian on a street of Grand Victorians where many of the country's top military brass all live. After dinner, General Golfing invited over a group of his friends and colleagues, other senior Air Force officials. We sat in the general's back yard, five of us in total. They were almost all former military pilots. Many of their fathers had been military pilots. They were the modern day equivalents of the people you're going to hear about in this book. And as the evening wore on, I began to notice something. Air House is just down the road from Reagan National Airport, and every ten minutes or so, a plane would take off just over our heads. Nothing fancy, just standard commercial passenger planes flying to Chicago or Tampa or Charlotte. And every time one of those planes flew overhead, the General and his comrades would all glance upwards just to take a look. They couldn't help themselves. Obsessives, my kind of people. Thanks for listening to that. Excerpt from my new book, Discover the Rest of the Story of the Bomber Mafia, available at Bomber Mafia dot com.

Pushkin. Hello, there are Pushkin listeners. This is Malcolm Gladwell. I'm the president of Pushkin Industries and host of Revisionist History. But I'm here today as an author. I've written half a dozen books, such as Outliers and Blink, but my new book, The Bomber Mafia is something different. First, it's a work of history, telling the story of how a new technology, air power upended the nature of modern warfare during the Second World War. It's also the first book I wrote to be heard rather than read. You can get the print version of The Bomber Mafia wherever you usually get your books. And I love my readers, but I urge you to listen. The Bomber Mafia is not your typical audio book. I didn't record it in a booth, solitary and bedantic. I worked with a whole team of sound engineers, researchers, editors, musicians, wizards of every kind. They were building the mightiest aircraft in history. I mean, would you rather I just read some torpid, ruddily nonsense like the B twenty nine bomber droned on through the night sky, or would you rather hear it for yourself? And the assembled airmen will listen to words that a few years ago would have been fantastic, but today rolle casually off a briefing officer's lips. The Taga gentleman is Japan. When I was researching, I went to Maxwell Air Force Base to dig through a mountain of tapes interviews with some of the most important military figures of the Second World War. These were the voices of people I'd only ever read about in history books. Suddenly they all came alive inside my head. It was magical, and it reminded me why I do what I do. We've devised an easy way for you to listen to the Bomber Mafia in the same player you're using to hear this podcast. Go to Bomber Mafia dot com and enter your email and payment method. You'll receive an email shortly after payment. Open it and follow the easy instructions to add the Bomber Mafia to your podcast app. I'm about to play you a piece of the Bomber Mafia audiobo Queer. I think it'll explain why I wrote it, and I hope you'll hear the magic. As a little boy lying in his bed, my father would hear the plains overhead on their way in then in the small hours of the morning, heading back to Germany. This was in England, in Kent, a few miles south and east of London. My father was born in nineteen thirty four, which meant he was five when the Second World War broke out. Kent was called bomb Alley by the British because it was the English county that German warplanes would fly over on their way to London. It was not uncommon in those years that if a bomber missed its target or had bombs left over, it would simply drop them anywhere on the return trip. One day, a stray bomb landed in my grandparents back garden. It didn't explode, It just sat there, half buried in the ground. And I think it's fair to say that if you were a five year old boy with an interest in things mechanical, a German bomb sitting unexploded in your backyard would have been just about the most extraordinary experience imaginable, Not that my father described it that way. My dad was a mathematician and an Englishman, which is to say that the language of emotion was not his first language. Rather, it was like Latin or French, something which one could study and understand but never fully master. Now that an unexploded German bomb in your backyard would be the most extraordinary experience imaginable for a five year old was my interpretation when my father told me that story of the bomb when I was five years old. That was in the late nineteen sixties. We were living in England then in Southampton. Reminders of what the country had gone through were still everywhere. If you went to London you could still tell where the bombs had landed, wherever a hideous brutalius building had sprouted up on some sentries old block. Here they come, they come an absolute steep dive and you can see that bombs actually leave the machine and coming to Walter. You can hear our own guns going like anything now. BBC Radio was always on in our house, and in those days it seemed like every second interview was with an old general or power trooper, a prisoner of war. We shall prove out he once like any and our island home ride out on the war. The first short story I wrote as a kid was about how Hitler was actually still alive and coming for England again. I sent it to my grandmother, the one in Kent who'd had the unexploded bomb in the back garden. When my mother heard about my story, she admonished me someone who lived through the war might not enjoy a plot line about Hitler's return. She reminded me. My father once took me and my brothers to a beach overlooking the English Channel. We crawled together through the remnants of an old world word too fortification. I still remember the thrill of wondering if we would come across some old bullets, or a shell casing, or even the skeleton of some long lost German spy who'd washed up on shore. I don't think we lose our childhood fascinations. I know I didn't. One day a few years back, I was looking at my book shelves and realized, to my surprise, just how many non fiction books about war I had accumulated. The big history bestsellers, but also the specialty histories, out of print, memoirs, academic texts, and what part of the war were most of these books about bombing air Power by Stephen Boudiansky, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare by Tammy Biddell, Decision over Schweinfurt by Thomas Coffee whole shelves of these histories. Usually when I start accumulating books like that, it's because I want to write something about the subject. I have shelves of books on social psychology because I've made my living writing about social psychology. But I never really wrote much about war, especially not the Second Wold War, or more specifically air power. Just bits and pieces here and there. Why. I don't know. I imagine that a Freudian would have fun with that question. But maybe the simpler answer is that the more a subject matters to you, the harder it is to find a story you want to tell about it. The bar is higher, which brings us to The Bomber Mafia, the audio book you are listening to now. I'm happy to say that with The Bomber Mafia, I've found a story worthy of my obsession. One last thing about the use of that last word, obsession. This book is a service to my obsessions, but it's also a story about other people's obsessions, about one of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century. I realize when I look at the things I've written about or explored over the years that I'm drawn again and again to obsessives. I like them. I liked the idea that someone could push away all the concerns and details that make up everyday life and just zero in on one thing, the thing that fits the contours of their imagination. Obsessives lead us astray, sometimes lack the bigger picture, serve not just the worlds but their own narrow interests. But I also don't think we get progress, or innovation, or joy or beauty without obsessives. When I was reporting this book, I had dinner with the then Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, David Goldfein. It was at the air House on the grounds of Fort Myer in northern Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, d C. A Grand Victorian on a street of Grand Victorians where many of the country's top military brass all live. After dinner, General Golfing invited over a group of his friends and colleagues, other senior Air Force officials. We sat in the general's back yard, five of us in total. They were almost all former military pilots. Many of their fathers had been military pilots. They were the modern day equivalents of the people you're going to hear about in this book. And as the evening wore on, I began to notice something. Air House is just down the road from Reagan National Airport, and every ten minutes or so, a plane would take off just over our heads. Nothing fancy, just standard commercial passenger planes flying to Chicago or Tampa or Charlotte. And every time one of those planes flew overhead, the General and his comrades would all glance upwards just to take a look. They couldn't help themselves. Obsessives, my kind of people. Thanks for listening to that. Excerpt from my new book, Discover the Rest of the Story of the Bomber Mafia, available at Bomber Mafia dot com.