Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama,

where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control.

There was this joke that said that it was easier to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ for murdering somebody than it was to be divorced.

From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders.

Listen to Revisionous History, the Alabama murders, wherever you get your podcast.

All right, everybody.

Welcome to the past times.

It's a podcast.

Is it?

No, it's not a podcast.

It's a series of technical hurdles until nobody wants to record a podcast anymore. You know what we do here. Each week we go through a newspaper from a random dated history picked out by none other than Dave Anthony. I, Gareth Reynolds, have never seen it, and neither has this week's guest the great Mike Brydenstein.

Hi, Mike.

Hi.

Thank you for having me. How are you? I'm fantastic. Thank you for being here. I feel good. Thank you for hanging in there, too. Yeah, I'm sorry about Gary. I'll be honest. I've been at it for 30 minutes today. Yeah. So you guys just got around seven, and that's pretty good. I learned about an accident.

I rolled in at the right time.

Yeah, Dave rolled in very confident that everything would be set up and it was. Wasn't. Was pretty much. Except for all the stuff we just did. Well, yeah, but I climbed a ladder. I turned on lights. I plugged in stuff. There's been a lot of ladder talk since I got here. Yeah. And it seems excessive. Well, there's a matter of time until there's a rope attached to whatever. But you're calling that thing there a ladder. Yeah. Because a lot of people would just call that a stepstool. When you get to my age, stepping still has become ladders. It's just got two

steps. Yeah, but that's a dance where I come from. How many steps that have to make a ladder?

I think that's a really good question. Four. Four steps. I think that's a pretty good answer. I'll be

honest. I'm the one getting ranked, but that's a pretty good answer. When does a step still become a ladder for?

I believe that's, I mean, that's what put Siddhartha and Nirvana, if memory serves, was a question like that.

That's right.

Mike, will you tell us about your book that is out now that came out yesterday?

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