Revisionist History is a podcast by Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell, produced by Gladwell's company Pushkin Industries. It first aired on June 3, 2016 and (as of May 2025) has aired thirteen seasons.
Gladwell, already a successful author and essayist, was convinced to create a podcast by his friend Jacob Weisberg, then editor-in-chief of The Slate Group. At that time Slate also operated the Panoply Media podcast network, which produced the first three seasons of the podcast. After Panoply announced that they would cease making podcasts in September 2018, he announced that he was co-founding a podcast production company with Weisberg named Pushkin Industries, which has produced the series since then.
Each episode begins with an inquiry about a person, event, or idea, and proceeds to question the received wisdom about the subject.
Contents
Episodes
Season 9 (2024)
The season Development Hell interviewed notable screenwriters and film directors about a passion project which never came to fruition.
Season 10 (2024)
This season was titled Hitler's Olympics and talked about the antecedents to and controversies regarding the 1936 Summer Olympics, particularly focusing on how Hitler used the games as a mouthpiece for Nazi ideology.
Season 11 (2024)
The first part of this season was a miniseries titled The Tipping Point Revisited, in which Gladwell revisits his 2000 book The Tipping Point and looks at it from a new stance.
Season 12 (2026)
The Mistakes Series is inspired by the book, From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn't Own You by Joshua L. Steiner and Michael Lynton; one of Malcom Gladwell's closest friends. Much like the book, the series begins at the 2014 Sony Pictures hack; both projects examine the origins of personal mistakes and their consequences on the people who made them.
Reception
Revisionist History has received positive reviews from critics. In Podcast Review, Nic Dobija-Nootens called it "perplexing, frustrating, and always worth a second look". The New York Times's Amanda Hess praises the show's impact, crediting it for creating a "podcast micro-genre … [of] history-bending show[s]".