The Air Force's role in the first half of the Second World War is basically about launching

these incredibly costly, complicated, massive missions against, first against Germany, then

the end against Japan, where they send hundreds and hundreds of bombers and men to bomb target

the deep inside Germany and they don't hit them, they're missing everything. And it's

like, you know, that's the first crisis of the Second World War for these Air Force

guys, which is what do we do now that this idea that we'd hatch back in Alabama? It doesn't

work. Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers Blank, Talking to strangers and his newest book, The Bomber

Mafia, which is an incredible look at the Air Force and the close of World War II.

We'll talk about them next. It's a real thrill. Somebody who I've been reading for years,

I know a lot of our listeners as well, the great Malcolm Gladwell. His most recent book,

The Bomber Mafia, Anybody that likes War History and he kind of shares with us, his passion

for it. So let's kind of start. There's a bunch of different ways I could start this.

I thought about it last night, but let's start with kind of a better understanding of what

the Air Force was, where it wasn't it standing, who was actually in control of it and how

it kind of started to deviate from the normal process of where it's kind of higher, he

wasn't in the military. Yeah. So yeah, so this is a book about this moment in the history

of the Air Force. The Air Force is at the beginning of the Second World War through the Second

World War, it's part of the Army and it's because the airplane is so new, it's like a,

this is brand new technology that no one particularly understands. And the Army is

run by these guys who think it's just a toy and as a group of young men, we call them

South of Bomber Mafia, who are in love with this technology and they're at Samari

base in Virginia and they have to do, among other things, cavalry training. They have

...