Hello, dear listeners. It's a bit odd to be talking to you on a Wednesday, but we thought

we could bring you something a little bit different. It's an episode from Revisionist History,

from our friends at Pushkin Industries, and it's a great follow-up to an episode we did earlier

this year about Seth Rogan's movie, The Interview, the film that went from parodying Kim Jong-un

to leading to one of the most devastating corporate hacks in history.

Was it worth it? Let's find out.

In this episode, host Malcolm Gladwell sits down with former Sony Pictures Entertainment head Michael Linton for a first-hand account of the attack from the man who greenlit the movie.

If you like this episode, Revisionist History has a new season all about mistakes. Listen

wherever you get your podcasts. On the morning of November 24, 2014, just a few days before Thanksgiving,

Michael Linton drove from his house in West Los Angeles to Culver City, the home of the sprawling complex that

houses Sony Pictures Entertainment. He was the CEO. He had been at Sony nearly 11 years.

The films were all going well. We had a bunch of stuff going really well on television,

Breaking Bad and Blacklist and things like that.

The music company also was having a very good year, so everything seemed to be on a steady pace.

He turned on to Bundy from San Vicente Boulevard.

I was driving to work, and I get a phone call from our CFO, Dave Henler, and he said, Mike, all of our systems are down.

Nothing is working here at the studio.

It appears like a bunch of our laptops have been fried and are unusable.

They're actually broken.

We do not, for the life of us, understand what's happened.

You arrived a few minutes later.

The studio is a lot like a college campus.

...