Revisionist History Malcolm Gladwell Analysis

Revisionist History is a series of podcasts created by the famous journalist Malcolm Gladwell who brought major topics that relate to life in the United States. Gladwell created these podcasts to reinterpret stories that he thinks is misconceived. Gladwell examines the topics precisely, with the occupation of other journalists, government officials and experts he arrives at a clearer understanding of the facts and tales about the past. Through listening to “Generous Orthodoxy” which is episode number nine in the first season of the Revisionist History series. Gladwell explained the meaning behind “Generous Orthodoxy” which consists of two words, the first word “Generous” means that the person is open to change, while the second word “Orthodoxy” means to stick with
one’s tradition and not be open to change which makes these two words opposite to each other. In my opinion i think that being open to change is a great thing because we are not alone in this world and there are many other people with a different way of thinking and by being able to accept others you will strengthen yourself by accepting new ideas and use it to build on the old ones. When i was living in my country i was stuck with obeying the traditions because I didn’t have another option to choose, but when i left my country in 2014 i was able to change my beliefs and accept new things in my life and that helped me a lot to improve myself and discover new things in our world. The second podcast that caught my attention while listening to this series is the first episode of the first season “The Lady Vanishes”.
In this podcast, by referring to Elizabeth Thompson and Julia Gillard, Gladwell illustrates moral licensing, where one good act is used to justify future less virtuous acts. Gladwell reviews two cases that is similar to each other and related to moral licensing too. The first case he mentioned in the podcast was about Elizabeth Thompson, she was a painter in the nineteenth century and she was the who painted the famous painting “The Roll Call”. Thompson gave cover to the royal academy to refuse her painting to be accepted in their ranks. The second case Gladwell referred to in the podcast is the case of Julia Gillard, the first female prime minister in Australia, and how she fought for her position and how even some members in her party said some surprising anti-feminist things after her election. I think this podcast was related to first one I talked about in some way because it also shows us how our world is not Generous enough to accept others and their ideas because of their gender or skin color and that’s what preventing our world from developing
correctly. In the end, i would like to say that We need a voice like Gladwell’s that goes deeper into the mucky figurative language to parse out the inapparent truth in spite of sarcasm which carries us only so far.