Revisionist History (Season 5)

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⭐ 6.5/10

(Originally written by Tim)

As always, I was really looking forward to listening to this season. I thought it started off with a bang, probably because he uses a Hobbit reference in his thesis for the first 2 episodes, but after that there was a 4 part series on bombing in the war. I felt that these episodes came across more as a history podcast, and I had a hard time connecting the dots to his thesis on this one. Really just felt more like an interesting character he wanted to talk about for 4 episodes. It was fascinating, and the last part of these 4 was very moving, just felt a bit bloated.

I did think that it got better after that, with more (shorter) looks at interesting people. I also found the finale pretty emotional, but once again I thought his conclusions were a bit flimsy, hinging on the basis that the 9/11 memorial and a graph plotting homeless people were conceptually the same thing.

Overall I can't say I loved this season. Had some bright spots, but wasn't consistently good. Maybe I am just growing tired of Malcolm taking such great liberties when connecting ideas, and drawing conclusions that are stretches. At the same time, I could listen to his voice all day, in particular the way he says "years" and "ZipRecruiter".

Every episode also started with an ad for another podcast, where the host says - "The question had been bothering me - who killed the truth", and goes on to be like, "I started a podcast to answer this question". Very cringey, and meant I had a bad taste in my mouth to start each time.

Additionally, it loses half a star for the downgraded theme music. They took something iconic and watered it down. Don't know why.

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