PODCAST: Malcolm Gladwell at First Parish Church

If you picked up the Globe yesterday, you may have been a bit befuddled to read a brief profile of everyone's favorite New Yorker essayist, Malcolm Gladwell, which advertised a reading by the author that evening in Harvard Square. A reading, which any Boston Phoenix reader could've told you, that actually took place the previous Monday. Not like anyone really reads G -- and Globe readers, of course, generally get what they deserve. But in this instance, they're in luck: maybe these commenters didn't read us the first time around, but we were in the house with our magical podcasterizer, which has captured the event and preserved it in carbonite for you, below. To wit: here we are again to bail out Morrissey Boulevard's hapless stooges. This Harvard Book Store-sponsored reading was, in typical Gladwellian fashion, mesmerizing. Whether you've already consumed his new Outliers: The Story of Success, or just skimmed the condensed excerpt in the New Yorker -- which, for those of you reading this on Sunday, is appropriately football-themed -- or are coming in cold, his associational storytelling prowess brought a jam-packed First Parish Meethinghouse crowd to its proverbial knees. The part about the planes should not be listened to within several weeks of flying.

DOWNLOAD: Malcolm Gladwell reads from Outliers at First Parish Meetinghouse [mp3]