Hello, Tim Halford here, and please allow me a brief moment to share some news about a fellow

Pushkin podcast. This season on revisionist history, Malcolm Gladwell, is diving into one of the

most infuriating corners of American life. Guns. The six episode series looks at America's gun

problem through topics such as TV Westerns, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and the insanity

of the Supreme Court. The series begins on August 31. You can binge listen to all six episodes early

and ad-free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus on Apple podcasts, or by visiting pushkin.fm-plus,

or you can hear the episodes each week in the revisionist history podcast feed.

Pushkin

William Cartwright is dropping off to sleep on an improvised bed in the textile mill he owns near

Heaton, Yorkshire, England. Outside, the river's spin flows gently by.

On working days, the river's current turns a wheel that powers machines that shear cloth.

The year is 1812, a Saturday night in April, just gone midnight.

The mill owner's dog begins to growl. All at once, Cartwright is alert.

He isn't sure yet if this is the trouble he's been expecting for weeks.

He's posted two guards outside the yard, and he had assumed they'd be the first to raise the alarm.

They haven't. And now the growling turns the barking. Cartwright springs out of bed.

He wakes the other nine men who are sleeping in the mill.

Or of his workers and five soldiers borrowed from a local regiment. No time to put on clothes,

the men pick up their guns. Outside, the gates of the yard are being battered off their hinges.

Cartwright's men are on the upper floor of the mill. They point their guns through holes

that have been made in the thick stone walls. They may listen and wait.

From outside, the sound of trampling feet and murmured voices, then another crash this time of

...