Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Hello, Revisions History listeners. We are back with
Speaker 1: a very very special announcement. I have a new book
Speaker 1: coming out. It's called Revenge of the Tipping Point. It's
Speaker 1: a sequel to The Tipping Point, my very first book
Speaker 1: from twenty five years ago. It's like a little silver
Speaker 1: anniversary present for you, my loyal listeners. The original Tipping
Speaker 1: Point was about how the best way to understand ideas
Speaker 1: and behaviors and social change was to use the model
Speaker 1: of the epidemic. This time around, in Revenge of the
Speaker 1: Tipping Point, I'm taking those ideas and going one big
Speaker 1: step deeper. Now I'm interested in the dark side. I
Speaker 1: go to Miami and try and figure out why Miami
Speaker 1: is so strange. I go to a seemingly perfect little
Speaker 1: town called Popular Growth, where a tragedy is unfolding. I
Speaker 1: have a chapter on the Holocaust that I think will
Speaker 1: completely surprise you. Yet another takedown of Harvard University. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm a broken record, but I'm inordinately proud
Speaker 1: of this one. On and on a mixture of narrative
Speaker 1: ingredients baked into a highly entertaining suffle. And today we're
Speaker 1: sharing an exclusive preview of Chapter one of the audiobook
Speaker 1: of Revenge of the Tipping Point. It's all about bank
Speaker 1: robbers and doctors. And that's all I'm going to tell you,
Speaker 1: because you'll have to listen to find out more. But
Speaker 1: that's not all. Coming up in the next couple of
Speaker 1: weeks on revisionist history, we have all kinds of goodies
Speaker 1: related to my book. We've got a two part episode
Speaker 1: on maybe my favorite criminal trial ever, something I call
Speaker 1: the Georgetown Massacre. Then an episode where I go back
Speaker 1: and audit the chapter I wrote on crime in the
Speaker 1: original Tipping Point. Did I get it right? And finally
Speaker 1: we're going to run the comment station I'm having with
Speaker 1: the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, at the
Speaker 1: ninety second Street y in New York. Stay tuned and
Speaker 1: for now enjoy this preview of Revenge of the Tipping Point.
Speaker 1: You can find Revenge of the Tipping Point wherever you
Speaker 1: get your audiobooks. Part one three Puzzles, Chapter one Casper
Speaker 1: and Sea Dog. It was just like wildfire. Everyone was
Speaker 1: jumping into the gate. One In the early afternoon of
Speaker 1: November twenty ninth, nineteen eighty three, the Los Angeles Field
Speaker 1: office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a call
Speaker 1: from a Bank of America branch in the Melrose District.
Speaker 1: The call was taken by an FBI agent named Linda Webster.
Speaker 1: She was the person in the office who fielded what
Speaker 1: were known as two elevens shorts. A bank robbery's there
Speaker 1: had just been a hold up. She was told the
Speaker 1: suspect was a young white male wearing a New York
Speaker 1: Yankees baseball cap, slender, polite Southern accent, well dressed. He
Speaker 1: said please and thank you. Webster turned to her colleague,
Speaker 1: William Rader, who ran the FBI's local bank robbery division.
Speaker 1: Bill it's the Yankee. The Yankee Bandit had been active
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles since July of that year. He had
Speaker 1: hit one bank after another, slipping away each time with
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in a leather suitcase. Raider was growing frustrated.
Speaker 1: Who was this man? All the bureau had to go
Speaker 1: on was that telltale baseball cap, hence the nickname the
Speaker 1: Yankee Bandit. Half an hour passed, Webster got another to eleven.
Speaker 1: This one was from a City National Bank sixteen blocks
Speaker 1: west in the Fairfax District. They had been taken for
Speaker 1: two thousand, three hundred and forty nine dollars. The caller
Speaker 1: gave Webster the details. She looked at Raider, Bill, it's
Speaker 1: the Yankee again. Forty five minutes after that, the Yankee
Speaker 1: hit a Security Pacific National Bank in Centry City, then
Speaker 1: immediately walked one block down the street and held up
Speaker 1: a First Interstate Bank for two thousand, five hundred and
Speaker 1: five dollars. Bill, it's the Yankee twice, back to back.
Speaker 1: Less than an hour passed, the phone rang again. The
Speaker 1: Yankee had just hid an Imperial Bank on Wilshire Boulevard.
Speaker 1: If you drive from Centry City to the Imperial Bank
Speaker 1: on Wiltshire, you pass right by the FBI's office. He
Speaker 1: probably waived at us. Raider told Webster they were now unnoticed.
Speaker 1: History was being made. They waited, could the Yankee possibly
Speaker 1: strike again? At five point thirty, the phone rang. An
Speaker 1: unknown white male slender an accent Yankee cap had just
Speaker 1: robbed the First Interstate Bank in Encino, fifteen minutes north
Speaker 1: on the four or five Freeway, for two thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirteen dollars. Bill, it's the Yankee. One man,
Speaker 1: four hours, six banks. It was a New World's record,
Speaker 1: Raider would later write in his memoirs Still Unbroken two,
Speaker 1: no criminal has ever held as exalted a position in
Speaker 1: American culture as the bank robber. In the years after
Speaker 1: the Civil War, the country was riveted by the exploits
Speaker 1: of bands such as the James Younger Gang, who terrorized
Speaker 1: the wild West with bank hold ups and trained robbers.
Speaker 1: In the Depression, bank robbers became celebrities. Bonnie and Clyde,
Speaker 1: pretty Boy Floyd John Dillinger, Billy brought.
Speaker 2: To Chicago recaptured after he had escaped from Lima, Ohio.
Speaker 2: Despert public enemy now rises to fame as an underworld hero.
Speaker 2: Where is Clyde Beryl and Bonnie Parker who died as
Speaker 2: they lived by a gun.
Speaker 1: But in the years after the Second World War, the
Speaker 1: crime seemed to be fading. In nineteen sixty nine, a
Speaker 1: total of thirteen hundred and eighteen banks were robbed across
Speaker 1: the entire United States, a modest number given the size
Speaker 1: of the country. There was speculation that bank robberies were
Speaker 1: headed toward extinction. Few major crimes had higher arrest and
Speaker 1: conviction rates. Banks felt they had learned how to protect themselves.
Speaker 1: A definitive study at bank robbery was entitled nothing to lose,
Speaker 1: meaning that the act seemed so irrational that its perpetrators
Speaker 1: must have run out of other options. It seemed like
Speaker 1: the twentieth century equivalent of cattle rustling, who does it anymore?
Speaker 1: But then came an epidemic. In a single year, from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy the number of bank
Speaker 1: robberies nearly doubled, then rose again in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: and once more in nineteen seventy two. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: three thousand, five hundred and seventeen banks were robbed. Two
Speaker 1: years later, the number was four thousand, five hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five. By the beginning of the nineteen eighties, they
Speaker 1: were five times more bank robberies than there had been
Speaker 1: at the end of the nineteen sixties. It was a
Speaker 1: crime wave without precedent, and it was just getting started.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, the FBI fielded a two to
Speaker 1: eleven call from a bank somewhere in the United States
Speaker 1: nine thousand, three hundred and eighty eight times, And the
Speaker 1: center of this astonishing surge was the city of Los.
Speaker 2: Angeles, the sprawling city that's home to Hollywood movie capital
Speaker 2: of the world is also the bank robbery capital of
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: A quarter of all bank robberies in the US in
Speaker 1: those years happened in Los Angeles. There were years when
Speaker 1: the local FBI office handled as many as twenty six
Speaker 1: hundred bank robberies. So many robbers robbing so many banks
Speaker 1: that Raider and the Bureau were forced to give them
Speaker 1: nicknames to keep them straight. The man who disguised himself
Speaker 1: with surgical gauze became the Mummy Bandit. The man who
Speaker 1: are a single glove became naturally the Michael Jackson Bandit.
Speaker 1: A two man team who wore fake mustaches with the
Speaker 1: Marx brothers. A short o beast robber was Miss Piggy.
Speaker 1: A beautiful robber was the Miss America Bandit. A guy
Speaker 1: who waved a knife was the Benni Hahonna Bandit. On
Speaker 1: and on it went. They were robbers named after Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash and Robert de Niro. One group robbed in threes,
Speaker 1: one dressed as a biker, another as a cop, and
Speaker 1: the third as a construction worker. Do you need to
Speaker 1: ask what they were called? This was the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: They were known as the Village People. It was just
Speaker 1: like wildfire, remembers Peter Hoolihan, one of the unofficial historians
Speaker 1: of the La Bank robbery Surge. Everybody was jumping into
Speaker 1: the game. Ten years into the surge, incredibly, things got
Speaker 1: much worse. The first generation of Ellie robbers were like
Speaker 1: the Yankee Bandit. They walked up to a teller and
Speaker 1: they had a gun, scooped up whatever cash was on hand,
Speaker 1: and fled. People called them a bit dismissively note passers.
Speaker 1: But then came a two man group called the West
Speaker 1: Hills Bandits. The West Sails Gang went back to the
Speaker 1: grand tradition of Jesse, James and Bonnie and Clyde. They
Speaker 1: came in hot in wigs and masks, waving assault weapons.
Speaker 1: They would force their way into the teller's cage and
Speaker 1: clean out the entire bank, empty the vault if they could,
Speaker 1: before executing a meticulously planned escape. The Bandits had a
Speaker 1: bunker in the San Fernando Valley filled with military grade
Speaker 1: weapons and twenty seven thousand rounds of ammunition to prepare
Speaker 1: for what their leader believed was an imminent armageddon. Even
Speaker 1: by the standards of nineteen nineties Los Angeles, the West
Speaker 1: Hills Gang was a little crazy. On their fifth robbery,
Speaker 1: the West Hills Gang broke into the vault of a
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo bank in Tarzana and made off with four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars more than one million
Speaker 1: in today's dollars. And then Wells Fargo made a crucial mistake.
Speaker 1: The bank told the press exactly how much the West
Speaker 1: Hills Gang had stolen. It was like putting a match
Speaker 1: to kindling. Four hundred and thirty seven thousand, Are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? One of the first to take notice was
Speaker 1: an enterprising twenty three year old named Robert Sheldon Brown.
Speaker 1: His street name was Casper. Casper did the math. I've robbed,
Speaker 1: I've done burglaries, I've done a little bit of everything,
Speaker 1: he would explain later. But the money couldn't compare to
Speaker 1: the bank. You could go into a bank and in
Speaker 1: two minutes get what on the streets would take you
Speaker 1: six or seven weeks to get. John Wiley, one of
Speaker 1: the prosecutors who eventually brought Casper to justice, remembers him
Speaker 1: as a standout. He said, Casper was really ripped and
Speaker 1: really smart.
Speaker 3: Here he is he figured out the problem with robbing
Speaker 3: banks is going into the bank, so he got somebody
Speaker 3: else to do that. You would think, how could you
Speaker 3: possibly get someone to rob a bank for you? And
Speaker 3: that was his particular talent, was recruiting people to rob
Speaker 3: banksworm and he recruited an unbelievable number of folks. He
Speaker 3: was kind of a producer in Hollywood terms.
Speaker 1: Casper had a partner in crime, Donzel Thompson, also known
Speaker 1: as Sea Dog. They would pick a bank they thought
Speaker 1: was ripe for a hit, then it'd find a getaway car,
Speaker 1: known in gangs speak as the g ride. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties, Los Angeles also experienced an astonishing surge
Speaker 1: in carjackings, which were treated in the press as another
Speaker 1: indication of the random mayhem sweeping the streets. But a
Speaker 1: good chunk of it was actually just Casper and Sea Dog.
Speaker 1: They had a guy they paid to acquire their g rides.
Speaker 1: If you were doing as many bank robberies as Casper was,
Speaker 1: you needed a lot of cars. Then he would pick
Speaker 1: the crew Prosecutor Wiley.
Speaker 3: Again, a lot of his robbers were just kids. I
Speaker 3: think he probably paid some of them nothing. He just
Speaker 3: coerced him into robbing. He was a big threatening guy,
Speaker 3: and you know he was a member of the role
Speaker 3: in the sixties was a very notorious crips gang.
Speaker 1: Wiley recalled a particular recruit who was very young, no
Speaker 1: more than thirteen or fourteen.
Speaker 3: I remember he took the kid out of school and said,
Speaker 3: you know, when can you rob this bank for me?
Speaker 3: And the guy said during nutrition break. So during nutrition
Speaker 3: break they picked him up and Brown and Thompson explained
Speaker 3: how to do it. You go in scurbate to death,
Speaker 3: get the money, get out.
Speaker 1: Casper taught his recruits a technique he called go and
Speaker 1: com akazi. His kids would come busting in, waving their
Speaker 1: machine pistols and assault rifles, firing rounds at the ceiling
Speaker 1: and screaming obscenities on the floor.
Speaker 2: Mother.
Speaker 1: They would stuff all the cash they could into pillowcases,
Speaker 1: grab wallets, and rip rings off women's fingers if they
Speaker 1: wanted a little extra treasure for the road. On at
Speaker 1: least two jobs, Casper borrowed a school bus to ferry
Speaker 1: his young charges to safety. Another time he borrowed a
Speaker 1: postal service truck. Casper had imagination he would exercise managerial
Speaker 1: oversight of his operations from a position of safety parked
Speaker 1: in a car somewhere far down the block, then follow
Speaker 1: his hand picked team as they raced through the streets.
Speaker 3: These guys knew if they tried to get away with
Speaker 3: them all the money that have these two roll in
Speaker 3: sixties crips after him, and that would not improve their lives.
Speaker 1: The g ride would be abandoned. The whole crew would
Speaker 1: retreat to Casper's hideout, usually in a motel, where he
Speaker 1: would pay them a pittance and let them go. They
Speaker 1: were kids, Chances are they would get caught, but Casper
Speaker 1: didn't care. Here's Wiley describing his general attitude.
Speaker 3: I mean, okay, so that wasn't great. My guys got caught.
Speaker 3: Now we have to get new guys. But we do
Speaker 3: that all the time.
Speaker 1: In just four years, Casper produced one hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: five robberies, which remains a lifetime bank robbery world record,
Speaker 1: crushing the Yankee Bandits previous mark of seventy two. Casper
Speaker 1: and Sea Dog even came close to the Yankee Bandits
Speaker 1: one day mark of six heists on a single day.
Speaker 1: In a August of nineteen ninety one, they produced five
Speaker 1: a first interstate bank on Losienega Boulevard, then banks in
Speaker 1: Eagle Rock, Pasadena, Monterey Park, and Montebello. And remember the
Speaker 1: Yankee bandit was a one man show. Casper was doing
Speaker 1: something infinitely more difficult, organizing and supervising teams of robbers.
Speaker 1: Once Casper showed the world how easy it was to
Speaker 1: take over a bank, other gangs jumped in. The eight
Speaker 1: tray gangster crips started putting together cruise. A duo called
Speaker 1: the Nasty Boys did almost thirty takeovers in under a
Speaker 1: year just the two of them. The Nasty Boys were nasty.
Speaker 1: They liked to herd everyone into the bank vault, talk
Speaker 1: loudly about executions, and fire their guns next to people's
Speaker 1: ears just for the fun of it.
Speaker 3: In retrospect, nineteen ninety two turned out to be the
Speaker 3: peak year for bank robberies. Two thousand, six hundred and
Speaker 3: forty one robberies in one.
Speaker 1: Year Wiley again.
Speaker 3: So that averages one bank robbery every forty five minutes
Speaker 3: for each banking day, and the worst day was twenty
Speaker 3: eight bank robberies in one day. This drove the FBI
Speaker 3: completely crazy. I mean they were completely exhausted.
Speaker 1: Robbing a bank takes minutes. Investigating a bank robbery takes hours.
Speaker 1: As the robberies piled up, the FBI would fall further
Speaker 1: and further behind.
Speaker 3: So if you're having twenty seven robberies a day, if
Speaker 3: one team is committing five robberies in one day, I mean,
Speaker 3: just think physically, how you investigate that. These guys are
Speaker 3: driving all over town as fast as they can robbing,
Speaker 3: so just keeping up with them in La traffic is
Speaker 3: a problem. You get to the bank and how many
Speaker 3: people have witnessed the robbery, Well, how many people were
Speaker 3: in the bank, You know, twenty people, So you need
Speaker 3: to get witness statements from twenty witnesses. This is a
Speaker 3: big project.
Speaker 1: Then just as you start, what happens.
Speaker 3: You're on the scene for five or ten minutes, and
Speaker 3: there's another bank robbery emergency somewhere across town. The FBI
Speaker 3: was being run ragged.
Speaker 1: The city of Los Angeles was the bank robbery capital
Speaker 1: of the world. Wiley held up a chart of bank
Speaker 1: robberies in Los Angeles from the nineteen seventies through the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: There was no reason to think it would crust. If
Speaker 3: you look at the trend line, it just seems like
Speaker 3: it's heading for the moon.
Speaker 1: The FBI put fifty agents on the case. Over the
Speaker 1: course of many months, they gathered what they could from
Speaker 1: Casper and Sea Dogs, terrified recruits, sorted through the layers
Speaker 1: of deception the two used to hide their assets and
Speaker 1: track them from one address to another across South Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It took forever to get a grand jury to indict
Speaker 1: Casper and Sea Dog, because what had they done? Nothing,
Speaker 1: They didn't rob any banks. They were just sitting in
Speaker 1: a car down the street. All the FBI had was
Speaker 1: a testimony of terrified teenagers who skipped school between lunch
Speaker 1: and recess. Finally, prosecutors thought they had enough evidence. They
Speaker 1: found Sea Dog at his grandmother's house in Carson and
Speaker 1: arrested Casper as he stepped out of a cab with
Speaker 1: the two of them behind bars. The bank robbery fever
Speaker 1: that had seized Los Angeles finally broke. Within roughly a year,
Speaker 1: the number of robberies in the city dropped thirty percent,
Speaker 1: then drifted even lower. Bank robberies didn't head for the moon.
Speaker 1: The contagion passed. When Casper and Sea Dog got out
Speaker 1: of federal prison in the summer of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: they shopped their story around Hollywood and took meetings with
Speaker 1: film producers. Movie executives who heard their story were incredulous
Speaker 1: that happened here. Yes it did. Three. I want to
Speaker 1: begin Revenge of the Tipping Point with a series of puzzles,
Speaker 1: three interconnected stories that seem at first glance to defy explanation.
Speaker 1: The third involves a little town called pop Lagrove. The
Speaker 1: second involves the story of a man named Philip s Forms.
Speaker 1: And this first chapter involves the exploits of the Yankee
Speaker 1: Bandit and Casper and Sea Dog. The Los Angeles bank
Speaker 1: robbery crisis of the early nineteen nineties was an epidemic.
Speaker 1: It fit all rules. This was not an outbreak generated
Speaker 1: inside each robber like a toothache. It was contagious. A
Speaker 1: low grade fever surfaced across the United States at the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen six sixties. In the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the Yankee Bandit caught that bug in Los Angeles. The
Speaker 1: West Hills Bandits later picked up that virus, and in
Speaker 1: their hands it mutated into something darker and more violent.
Speaker 1: They passed a new Strainnan to Caspar and Sea Dog,
Speaker 1: who reinvented the process outsourcing the labor and scaling up
Speaker 1: dramatically like the late twentieth century capitalists they were. And
Speaker 1: from there the infection went clear across the city to
Speaker 1: the Eight Tray gangsters and the Nasty Boys, and on
Speaker 1: and on, sweeping up hundreds of young men, until by
Speaker 1: the time the bank takeover boom peaked in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: the small time note passing of the Yankee Bandit era
Speaker 1: seemed like a dim memory. Socio epidemics are propelled by
Speaker 1: the efforts of an exceptional few people who play outsized
Speaker 1: social roles, and that was exactly how the LA outbreak unfolded.
Speaker 1: This was never a mass participation event like one of
Speaker 1: those big city marathons where tons of thousands of people
Speaker 1: sign up. It was a reign of mayhem, driven by
Speaker 1: a small number of people who robbed over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. The Yankee Bandit robbed sixty four banks
Speaker 1: in nine months before the FBI finally grabbed him. He
Speaker 1: went to prison for ten years, got out, then robbed
Speaker 1: eight more banks. The Nasty Boys did twenty seven banks.
Speaker 1: Casper and Sea Dog masterminded one hundred and seventy five.
Speaker 1: If you focused only on the Yankee Bandit, Casper and
Speaker 1: the Nasty Boys. You would have a pretty complete picture
Speaker 1: of what happened in Los Angeles in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and early nineteen nineties, A contagious phenomenon that rose and tipped,
Speaker 1: fueled by the extraordinary actions of a few Casper, while
Speaker 1: he said, is the super spreader if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about epidemics, was the context in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and the early nineteen nineties ripe for a bank robbery explosion? Yes,
Speaker 1: it was. Between the nineteen seventies and the end of
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, the number of bank branches in the
Speaker 1: United States tripled. Casper and Sea Dog were shooting fish
Speaker 1: in a barrel. The fever that swept Los Angeles in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties makes perfect sense,
Speaker 1: except for one thing. There's a puzzle.
Speaker 3: Four.
Speaker 1: In the early morning of March ninth, nineteen fifty, Willie
Speaker 1: Sutton rose and applied a heavy coat of makeup to
Speaker 1: his face. The previous evening he had dyed his hair
Speaker 1: several shades lighter, so that he was almost blonde, and
Speaker 1: now he wanted to pair that with an olive complexion.
Speaker 1: He applied mascara to his eyebrows. To give them some substance.
Speaker 1: He stuffed bits of cork inside his nostrils to broaden
Speaker 1: his nose. That he put on a gray suit, tailored
Speaker 1: and padded in such a way as to alter his silhouette. Satisfied,
Speaker 1: did he no longer look like Willy Sutton? Willie Sutton
Speaker 1: left his house in Staten Island for Sunnyside, Queen's to
Speaker 1: a Manufacture's Trust Company branch at forty fourth Street and
Speaker 1: Queen's Boulevard in New York City. Sutton had spent the
Speaker 1: previous three weeks standing across the street every morning, learning
Speaker 1: the routines of the bank's employees. He liked what he saw.
Speaker 1: There was an elevated subway stop across the street, a
Speaker 1: bus stop, and a taxi stand. The street was busy
Speaker 1: and Sutton like crowds. The bank's guard, a slow moving
Speaker 1: man named Weston who lived nearby, arrived every morning at
Speaker 1: eight thirty, engrossed in his newspaper. Between eight thirty and nine,
Speaker 1: he would let in the bank's other employees, culminating in
Speaker 1: the bank's manager, mister Hoffman, who arrived like clockwork at
Speaker 1: nine o one. The Manufacturer's Trust opened to the public
Speaker 1: at ten o'clock, much later than most bank branches. This
Speaker 1: too made Sutton happy. He regarded the time between the
Speaker 1: arrival of the first employee and the arrival of the
Speaker 1: first customer as his time, and his time in this
Speaker 1: case would be more than an hour. At eight twenty,
Speaker 1: Sutton mingled with the crowd waiting at the bus stop.
Speaker 1: A few minutes later, the Castilian Weston turned the corner,
Speaker 1: lost in his newspaper. As Weston took out his keys
Speaker 1: to open the door, Sutton slipped in behind him. Weston
Speaker 1: turned in shock. Sutton looked him in the eye and
Speaker 1: said quietly, come inside. I want to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Sutton wasn't a fan of guns. Guns for him were props.
Speaker 1: His real weapon was a quiet authority that compelled the
Speaker 1: attention of others. He explained to the guard what would
Speaker 1: happen next. First they would let him one of his accomplices.
Speaker 1: Then the remaining employees would be admitted, exactly as they
Speaker 1: were each morning. As each one entered, Sutton's accomplice would
Speaker 1: emerge and lead them by the elbow to a row
Speaker 1: of chairs he'd set up in preparation. Once you've taken
Speaker 1: control of the bank, Sutton would write years later in
Speaker 1: his memoirs. Sutton was sufficiently famous by that point that
Speaker 1: he wrote not one, but two sets of memoirs. Like
Speaker 1: a statesman who feels the need to respond to the
Speaker 1: turns of history, it doesn't really matter who comes to
Speaker 1: the door. A trio of painters once arrived unexpectedly while
Speaker 1: I was taking a bank in Pennsylvania, and I simply
Speaker 1: told them to spread out their drop cloths and go
Speaker 1: to work. The pay you guys get, the bank can't
Speaker 1: afford to have you hang around doing nothing. They're insured
Speaker 1: against bank robbers, but nobody would insure them against you robbers.
Speaker 1: All during the robbery, I was able to keep up
Speaker 1: a line of chatter about how I could have retired
Speaker 1: by now if we bankrobb had as stronger union as
Speaker 1: they did. Everyone had a good time, and by the
Speaker 1: time we walked out the door with the money, they
Speaker 1: had one of the walls completely painted. Sutton was terrifyingly charming.
Speaker 1: Did the employees of the Manufacturer's Trust Company realize that
Speaker 1: the famous Willie Sutton was robbing them that morning? Undoubtedly
Speaker 1: they filed into the conference room one by one. Don't
Speaker 1: worry folks. He told them, it's only money, and it
Speaker 1: isn't your money. At nine oh five, four minutes late,
Speaker 1: mister Hoffman, the manager, arrived, Sutton sat him down. If
Speaker 1: you give me any trouble, I want you to know
Speaker 1: that some of these here employees of yours will be shot.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to have any false illusions about that. Now.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you don't care about your own safety, but the
Speaker 1: health of these here employees of yours are your responsibility.
Speaker 1: If anything happens to them, the blame will be yours,
Speaker 1: not mine. It was a bluff, of course, but it
Speaker 1: worked every time. He scooped up the money from the vault,
Speaker 1: ambled out the door to a waiting getaway car, and
Speaker 1: vanished into the New York City traffic. Willie Sutton was
Speaker 1: the New York version of Casper, although that doesn't quite
Speaker 1: do Willie Sutton justice. Nobody knew much about Casper at
Speaker 1: the time he was orchestrating his bank robbery spree. Even
Speaker 1: his trial barely made a dent in the news. Not
Speaker 1: so Willie Sutton.
Speaker 2: Willy Sutton, whose captur ends a five year manhunt still
Speaker 2: carrying a big bank roll, the nation's most elusive bank
Speaker 2: robber is arrested in Brooklyn, America's most wanted criminal, His
Speaker 2: arrest brings promotion.
Speaker 1: Sutton was a celebrity. He did it's starlit's. He was
Speaker 1: a master of disguise. He made not one, but two
Speaker 1: daring escapes from prison. He was once asked why do
Speaker 1: you rob banks, and he replied, because that's where the
Speaker 1: money is. Later he would deny having said that, but
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. To this day. His quip is known
Speaker 1: as Sutton's law, and it's used to instruct medical students
Speaker 1: on the importance of considering the likeliest diagnosis. First, Hollywood
Speaker 1: made a movie about his life. A writer turned his
Speaker 1: story into a biographical novel. In Today's Dollars, He claimed
Speaker 1: to have stolen more than twenty million over the course
Speaker 1: of his career. Casper wasn't even in the same tax
Speaker 1: bracket as Willy Sutton, assuming of course, that they paid taxes,
Speaker 1: which neither of them did. The point is that if
Speaker 1: anyone were to start a bank robbery epidemic, you'd think
Speaker 1: it would be Willy Sutton. You would think that the
Speaker 1: impressionable criminal classes of New York City would look at
Speaker 1: slick Willie effortlessly slipping into bank branches without firing a shot,
Speaker 1: and making off with the king's ransom and say to themselves,
Speaker 1: I can do that. In epidemiology, there's a term called
Speaker 1: the index case, which refer to the person who kicks
Speaker 1: off an epidemic. We're going to talk about one of
Speaker 1: the most fascinating index cases in recent history later in
Speaker 1: this book. Willie Sutton should have been the index case, right.
Speaker 1: He turned the grubby job of holding up a bank
Speaker 1: into a work of art. But Willie Sutton did not
Speaker 1: start a bank robbery epidemic in New York City, not
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties and fifties, in his heyday, nor
Speaker 1: in the years afterward, as he wrote one memoir after another.
Speaker 1: After talking his way out of prison in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: claiming ill health, he would live another eleven years, Sutton
Speaker 1: recreated himself as an expert on prison reform, giving lectures
Speaker 1: across the country. He consulted with banks on how to
Speaker 1: prevent bank robberies. He even did a TV commercial for
Speaker 1: a credit card company pioneering a card with a photo
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 4: They call it the face God. You see it as
Speaker 4: your face right on it. Now when I say, Lily Sutton,
Speaker 4: if I believe me.
Speaker 1: Did that make the world want to be Willie Sutton?
Speaker 1: Apparently not. In the days of Casper, New York City
Speaker 1: suffered only a fraction of the bank robberies that Los
Speaker 1: Angeles did. An epidemic, by definition, is a contagious phenomenon
Speaker 1: that does not respect borders. When COVID first emerged in
Speaker 1: China in late twenty nineteen, epidemiologists worried that it would
Speaker 1: spread everywhere, and they were absolutely right. Yet in the
Speaker 1: bank case, the fever engulfed Los Angeles but skipped other
Speaker 1: cities altogether. Why this is the first of the three puzzles,
Speaker 1: and the answer involves a famous observation made by a
Speaker 1: physician named John Weinberg five life. In nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: fresh out of his medical training, John Wenburg got a
Speaker 1: job in Vermont as part of a federally funded operation
Speaker 1: called the Regional Medical Program. These were the years of
Speaker 1: the Great Society, when the US government was making a
Speaker 1: concerted effort to expand the American's social safety net. Weinberg's
Speaker 1: job was to map the quality of care across the
Speaker 1: state to make sure everyone was getting access to the
Speaker 1: same standard of medicine. He was young and idealistic. He
Speaker 1: had studied under some of the best minds in medicine
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins University. Weinberg arrived in Vermont, he said later,
Speaker 1: still believing quote in the general paradigm that science was
Speaker 1: advancing and that it was being translated rationally into effective
Speaker 1: care end quote. Vermont had two hundred and fifty one towns.
Speaker 1: Weinburg began by dividing up those communities according to where
Speaker 1: their local residents got their medical care. That left him
Speaker 1: with thirteen hospital districts across the state. He then calculated
Speaker 1: the amount of money that was spent on medical care
Speaker 1: in each of those districts. Wenberg assumed that what he
Speaker 1: would see was that in some far away corner of
Speaker 1: Vermont where there wasn't much money, spending would be low,
Speaker 1: and by the same logic, in wealthier communities such as Burlington,
Speaker 1: the biggest city in the state, home to the University
Speaker 1: of Vermont and Champlain College, where the hospitals were the
Speaker 1: newest and most sophisticated and the doctors more likely to
Speaker 1: have trained at prestigious medical schools, spending would be a
Speaker 1: bit higher. He was completely wrong. Yes, they were differences
Speaker 1: in spending from one hospital district to the next. But
Speaker 1: the differences weren't small. They were enormous, and they didn't
Speaker 1: follow any apparent logic. They were as when put it
Speaker 1: without rhyme or reason. Surgery for removing hemorrhoids, for example,
Speaker 1: was five times more common in some districts than in others.
Speaker 1: Your chances of getting an enlarged prostate surgically removed, or
Speaker 1: your uterus removed in a hysterectomy, or your appendix removed
Speaker 1: after an attack of appendicitis were three times higher in
Speaker 1: some districts than in others. Here's Wenberg years later, describing
Speaker 1: his early work in an interview with the Community Health
Speaker 1: Centers podcast Conversations on Healthcare.
Speaker 4: We first from at across this in Vermont, where we
Speaker 4: looked at a whole bunch of different attributes of healthcare system.
Speaker 4: The one that sticks out in most people's mind as
Speaker 4: the incredible variation that we saw in time feleectomy rates,
Speaker 4: where literally by going five miles up the road and
Speaker 4: entering a new hospital service area, had jumped from about
Speaker 4: a twenty percent risk of having a tonsil out by
Speaker 4: age fifteen to well over sixty percent, So that gives
Speaker 4: you an idea of what the basic variability was. And
Speaker 4: this variation sembly could not be explained on the basis
Speaker 4: of differences in the incidents of sword throats or tonsilitis
Speaker 4: or anything like that, and it was traced pretty much
Speaker 4: directly back to the medical opinion of the physicians and
Speaker 4: the different communities.
Speaker 1: Weinburg saw this firsthand. He was living at the time
Speaker 1: midway between the small Vermont towns of Stowe and Waterbury.
Speaker 1: His kids went to school in Waterbury, a town where
Speaker 1: tons electomies were rare, But had Weinberg's family been living
Speaker 1: one hundred yards north, his kids would have gone to
Speaker 1: school in Stowe, where everyone got their tonsils out. It
Speaker 1: made no sense. Stowe and Waterbury were both idyllic small towns,
Speaker 1: full of weathered nineteenth century buildings. Nobody seriously I thought
Speaker 1: that one was more worldly or was in the grip
Speaker 1: of a different medical ideology than the other. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that Stowe attracted one kind of person and Waterbury attracted another,
Speaker 1: very different kind of person. The people were the same,
Speaker 1: except that is that the children of Waterbury tended to
Speaker 1: keep their tonsils and the children of Stowe did not.
Speaker 1: Wenburg was now deeply confused had he stumbled upon some
Speaker 1: strange quirk of the small towns of Vermont. He decided
Speaker 1: to expand his analysis to other parts of New England.
Speaker 1: He compared Middlebury, Vermont versus Randolph, New Hampshire. These two
Speaker 1: cities are essentially twins. But when he looked further at
Speaker 1: the data, he found that in Randolph the doctors conducted
Speaker 1: themselves in a kind of over caffeinated frenzy, spending freely
Speaker 1: hospitalizing and operating on everyone inside. But Middlebury Middlebury was
Speaker 1: a different world. Weinberg called what he had discovered small
Speaker 1: area variation, and he found evidence of it across the
Speaker 1: entire United States. And what started as an idiosyncratic observation
Speaker 1: about the small towns of Vermont has turned into an
Speaker 1: iron law that, half a century after Weinberg made his
Speaker 1: startling discovery, shows no signs of going away. How your
Speaker 1: doctor treats you, in many cases, has less to do
Speaker 1: with where your doctor was trained or how well he
Speaker 1: or she did in medical school, or what kind of
Speaker 1: personality your doctor has, than with where your doctor lives.
Speaker 1: Why does place matter so much? The easiest explanation for
Speaker 1: small area variation is that doctors are simply doing what
Speaker 1: patients want. So, for example, let's pick a relatively simple
Speaker 1: medical event, how many times a doctor visits a patient
Speaker 1: in the last two years of their life. The national
Speaker 1: average in twenty nineteen is around fifty four visits. In Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: by contrast, the average is much lower, thirty six. But
Speaker 1: you know what it is in Los Angeles, it's one
Speaker 1: hundred and five. You get three times more doctor visits
Speaker 1: in your dying days in LA than you do in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: That's a huge difference. Is it because dying Minnesotans behave
Speaker 1: like stoic Scandinavians whereas the very old of Los Angeles
Speaker 1: are needy in demanding The answer seems to be no.
Speaker 1: Weenberg and other researchers have found that small area of
Speaker 1: variation does not result from what patients want their doctors
Speaker 1: to do. It stems from what doctors want to do
Speaker 1: to their patients. So why do doctors behave so differently
Speaker 1: from place to place? Is this just about money? Maybe
Speaker 1: more people in Los Angeles have the kind of insurance
Speaker 1: that rewards doctors for treating their patients aggressively. The technical
Speaker 1: term for this is payer mix. A city with one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of its citizens covered by fee for service
Speaker 1: insurance where a doctor gets paid for everything they do
Speaker 1: is going to have a very different pattern of care
Speaker 1: than a city where one hundred percent of its citizens
Speaker 1: are enrolled in managed care, where payments to doctors and
Speaker 1: hospitals are fixed. But does Los Angeles have a radically
Speaker 1: different payer mix than any other big city? No, it doesn't. Okay,
Speaker 1: what if this is just random? After all, doctors are people,
Speaker 1: and people are all over the map in what they believe.
Speaker 1: Maybe Los Angeles is a place where, by chance, many
Speaker 1: aggressive doctors happen to practice, while Minneapolis is a place where,
Speaker 1: by chance, there are very few.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Random would mean that aggressive doctors would be scattered across
Speaker 1: the country in patterns that ebb and flow with each
Speaker 1: passing year. Random would mean that every hospital would have
Speaker 1: a different combination of physicians, representing a sampling of ideas
Speaker 1: about how to practice medicine. They would be a doctor
Speaker 1: Smith who always took out tonsils, and a doctor Jones
Speaker 1: who never did, and then a doctor McDonald who was
Speaker 1: somewhere in between. But that's not what Wemburg identified years ago.
Speaker 1: What he found instead were medical clusters where the doctors
Speaker 1: in one hospital district took on a common identity, as
Speaker 1: if they had all been infected by the same contagious idea.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Skinner, an economist at Dartmouth University who's one of
Speaker 1: the heirs to Weinburg's work, said, it's a birds of
Speaker 1: a feather flock together puzzle.
Speaker 5: Like, okay, doctors have different opinions, like people develop opinions
Speaker 5: about what works. But the question is, what is it
Speaker 5: about an area that causes some people to practice in
Speaker 5: one way on average and something that's kind of in
Speaker 5: the water.
Speaker 1: Six small area variation has subsequently become something of an
Speaker 1: obsession for medical researchers. Books are written about it, scholars
Speaker 1: spend their days studying it. But what's fascinating is how
Speaker 1: the same inexplicable patterns of variation turn up outside the
Speaker 1: world of medical care. Let me give you an example.
Speaker 1: The state of California keeps the public database of what
Speaker 1: percentage of seventh graders at any middle school in the
Speaker 1: state are up to date with their recommended vaccines chicken pox, measles,
Speaker 1: mom's rebella, polio, and so on. If you give the
Speaker 1: list and it's a long list. A cursory glance, it
Speaker 1: seems pretty straightforward. The overwhelming number of public school kids
Speaker 1: in California have received all their shots. So what about
Speaker 1: private school kids. Private schools tend to be smaller and corkier.
Speaker 1: Could there be more variation there? Let's take a look.
Speaker 1: Here are vaccination rates chosen at random from a selection
Speaker 1: of private elementary schools in Contra Costa County east of
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Saint John the Baptist one hundred percent, El
Speaker 1: Sebrante Christian School one hundred percent, Contracosta Jewish Day School
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. The list goes on. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of private elementary schools in Contracosta County, and the
Speaker 1: parents who live there seem pretty intent on protecting their
Speaker 1: children from infectious diseases. Saint Perpetua one hundred percent, Saint
Speaker 1: Catherine of Siena one hundred percent. But wait, there's one
Speaker 1: school that's very different, East Bay Waldorf forty two percent.
Speaker 1: Forty two percent. Is this a fluke, a chance deviation
Speaker 1: from a consistent pattern. Let's take a look at private
Speaker 1: schools in El Dorado County, just down the list alphabetically
Speaker 1: from Contra Costa g HS Academy ninety four percent, Holy
Speaker 1: Trinity School one hundred percent, and then wait for it,
Speaker 1: Cedar Springs Waldorf thirty six percent. Estra Los Angeles. Most
Speaker 1: middle schools, like their counterparts around the state are up
Speaker 1: in the nineties or at one hundred percent, but once again,
Speaker 1: there is an exception far on the west side of
Speaker 1: the city, in the exclusive neighborhood of Pacific Palisades West
Speaker 1: Side Waldorf twenty two percent. If you've never heard of
Speaker 1: Waldorf schools, they're a movement started by the Austrian educator
Speaker 1: Rudolf Steiner in the early twentieth century. Waldorf schools are
Speaker 1: small and expensive and focus on holistic learning, seeking to
Speaker 1: develop the creativity and imagination of their students. There are
Speaker 1: several thousand Waldorff schools around the world, mostly kindergartens and
Speaker 1: elementary schools, and about two dozen in California, and almost
Speaker 1: without exception, the lowest vaccination rates in any California town
Speaker 1: that has a Waldorf school are at the Waldorf school.
Speaker 1: There are other schools with unvaccinateed rates as highest Waldorf,
Speaker 1: but they're rare. Here is Sonoma County Saint Vincent de
Speaker 1: Paul Elementary School one hundred percent, Rincon Valley Christian one
Speaker 1: hundred percent, Sonoma Country Day School ninety four percent, Saint
Speaker 1: Eugene Cathedral School ninety seven percent, Saint Rose one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: Summerfield Waldorff School twenty four percent. California had two measles
Speaker 1: outbreaks in the mid twenty tens.
Speaker 4: Right now there are nine confirmed cases of the measles
Speaker 4: which are tied to Disneyland or Disney's California.
Speaker 3: As health officials try and contain the virus, parents are
Speaker 3: being urged to vaccinate their children.
Speaker 1: The outbreaks led many to say that California was suffering
Speaker 1: from a problem with vaccine skepticism. But that's wrong. Look
Speaker 1: again at those elementary schools with one hundred percent vaccination rates.
Speaker 1: It's actually small pockets of people within the state, such
Speaker 1: as the parents who sent their kids to a very
Speaker 1: specific brand of elementary school, who have a vaccine problem.
Speaker 1: John Wenberg would recognize the pattern in an instant vaccine
Speaker 1: skepticism is small area of variation. This is the first
Speaker 1: lesson of social epidemics. When we look at a contagious event,
Speaker 1: we assume that there is something fundamentally wild and unruly
Speaker 1: about the path it takes. But there is nothing wild
Speaker 1: and unruly about the La Bank robbery epidemic, or the
Speaker 1: patterns of medical practice in Waterbury versus Stowe, or the
Speaker 1: ideas of Waldorf parents. Whatever contagious belief unites the people
Speaker 1: in those instances has the discipline to stop at the
Speaker 1: voters of their community. There must be a set of
Speaker 1: rules buried somewhere below the surface, which brings us to
Speaker 1: puzzle number two. Thanks for listening to that preview of
Speaker 1: my new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. You can
Speaker 1: hear the rest on audible, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, Spotify, Pushkin,
Speaker 1: dot FM, or wherever you like to listen. Coming up
Speaker 1: next on Revisionist History, two narrative episodes about my favorite
Speaker 1: trial of all time, and a deep dive on broken windows,
Speaker 1: a theory that I helped popularize in The Tipping Point?
Speaker 1: Did I get it right? And what's changed twenty five
Speaker 1: years later?
Speaker 3: And I would go around and I would talk to
Speaker 3: people in New York City, and the.
Speaker 5: Liberal people, progressive people say oh, well, you know, we've
Speaker 5: had this miracle in New York.
Speaker 3: And some people would say, oh yeah, Malcolm Gladwell's idea.
Speaker 3: Broken Windows.
Speaker 1: Revision's history is produced by Nina Bird, Lawrence, Lucy Sullivan,
Speaker 1: and Ben ad F. Haffrey. Our editor is Karen Chakerji,
Speaker 1: and our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Sarah Nix. The Revenge of the Tipping Point audiobook was
Speaker 1: executive produced by Kerry Colan, directed by Alexandra Garreton with
Speaker 1: help from Louis Mitchell, Engineered by Nina Bird Lawrence, guitar
Speaker 1: by Ged Corbin. It was produced by Alexandra Garreton and
Speaker 1: Louis Mitchell. Nicole op den Bosch is Pushkin's VP of
Speaker 1: Operations and Publishing. Special thanks to Jasmine Faustino and of
Speaker 1: course el Hefe Greta. Come, I'm Malcolm Popple