Pushkin

In the space of a week back before the world came to a halt, I took two trips.

One was to downtown Manhattan to the 9-11 Memorial. I'm ashamed to say I'd never visited before, even though I live in Manhattan.

One expressed subway stop away. I'd seen pictures, I'd walked right by it, but for some reason I'd never gone right up to it.

So I did, finally. I saw the two big holes in the ground marking the spot where the twin towers once stood.

I saw the waterfalls, the black stone, the somber lines of trees surrounding the Memorial.

It was pouring rain. There was no one else there.

My second trip was to Jacksonville, Florida, two unseasonably cold winter days.

I wanted to see a chart. I know that might seem odd, who goes to Florida to see a chart.

But there I sat in the conference room of what looked like an old bank right by the freeway.

And someone hooked a laptop up to a big screen and showed me a scatter plot.

X-axis, Y-axis, a bunch of dots each in the shape of a human figure.

At the time, I didn't think of my visit to Florida and my visit to the 9-11 Memorial as connected.

They were just two random quests that seemed like they might lead somewhere.

That's what I do at the beginning of every year when I start the research for a new season of the show.

I spend a lot of time pursuing random ideas.

But then March came, and the world turned very strange and very dark.

And I sat in my room and realized that those two trips were about the same thing.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History.

My podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.

This is the final episode of a season that has been preoccupied with understanding our attachments.

To objects, to rituals, to traditions, to elaborate bits of machinery like errors.

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