Speaker 1: Wake that answer up in the morning Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2: Yes, the world most dangerous morning show to Breakfast Club
Speaker 2: Charlamagne the God just hilarious and we had to step
Speaker 2: out for a second.
Speaker 1: But we have the great Malcolm Gladwell here this morning.
Speaker 1: Good morning brother, good morning, Morning, Morning Morning.
Speaker 2: He just released the six part series Our Revision is
Speaker 2: History is Back.
Speaker 1: What is the series about?
Speaker 3: Man, It's about gun violence. Decided to do up an
Speaker 3: sort of an extended look at what we're not talking
Speaker 3: about when it comes to guns in this country, some
Speaker 3: of them. It ranges all over the map. There's a
Speaker 3: We started by making fun of the Supreme Court, which
Speaker 3: is surprisingly easy to do. There's one there's this one
Speaker 3: case that they had two years ago, which is this
Speaker 3: big the New York City where they struck down a
Speaker 3: New York state gun law that had been a place
Speaker 3: for one hundred years. And there's an exchange and they
Speaker 3: tape you know, their or arguments. They tape them so
Speaker 3: you can listen to them. There's an exchange where the
Speaker 3: justices to the Justices Alito and Kavanaugh are arguing with
Speaker 3: the lawyer for New York State and their their argument
Speaker 3: is that we would all be better off if we
Speaker 3: could carry handguns on the subway, And the lawyer for
Speaker 3: New York State is like, basically, she's insane. Basically she's like,
Speaker 3: have you ever ridden the subway? You know what a
Speaker 3: gunfight on a subway would look like? And they're completely oblivious,
Speaker 3: and so we I went on and on about this,
Speaker 3: like imagining it's a bunch of guys. One of the
Speaker 3: guy's alitos from like a rich kid from suburban New Jersey.
Speaker 3: If he has ever ridden the subway in his life,
Speaker 3: I'd be very surprised. Kavanaugh is like a rich kid
Speaker 3: from suburban DC, like, you know, the closest he came
Speaker 3: to the subway was his mom's minivan. And they're having
Speaker 3: this surreal conversation with a legit think that if everybody
Speaker 3: on the A train had a glock, we would be safer,
Speaker 3: Like it's just like that level. So that's that's sort
Speaker 3: of one of the early ones. And then tell a
Speaker 3: bunch of about what I'm sorry about a crazy story about
Speaker 3: a guy in Alabama who had a shooting in his
Speaker 3: home and what happens when the ambulance doesn't come because
Speaker 3: they think the the kid who got shot is black wow.
Speaker 3: And and then I went the last one is the
Speaker 3: one of the most moving ones' ever done. There's a guy,
Speaker 3: an er doc at the University of Chicago Hospital cut
Speaker 3: up called up Della Price and grew up on the
Speaker 3: South Side, but goes to med school and then practices
Speaker 3: on the South Side. And that's, you know, obviously one
Speaker 3: of the epicenters of gun violence in this country. I mean,
Speaker 3: I just sat down with him. I went Chicago. I
Speaker 3: sat down with him and he's start of talking about
Speaker 3: the experience of when you don't know what the people
Speaker 3: are wheeled in on the gurney on a Saturday night,
Speaker 3: and he'll know chances are he grew up with. That
Speaker 3: kid told me, I think fifteen people he grew up
Speaker 3: with have been killed by guns in the last since
Speaker 3: he you know, and when he said grew up with
Speaker 3: he met friends people, he said his definition was somebody
Speaker 3: who was in his phone. I know them personally. I just,
Speaker 3: I just I just went all around the country, you know, Alabama, Chicago,
Speaker 3: he went to hung out with some trauma surgeons in DC,
Speaker 3: talk about what happens when when you show up at
Speaker 3: a and it was just the most the one of
Speaker 3: the fascinating things about it was very few of the
Speaker 3: people who I talked to who are on the front
Speaker 3: lines of gun Mountain's country, talked about gun control. There's
Speaker 3: an interest them, it's it's they see what's going on
Speaker 3: and the debate that we the policy debates we have
Speaker 3: in Washington are just so far removed from their daily experience.
Speaker 3: If two kids, both with illegal handguns, get high on
Speaker 3: a Saturday night and have an argument and shoot each other,
Speaker 3: how exactly is a law and Washington supposed to fix that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right? Or you get shot and you die. Because this
Speaker 3: is the story I was telling. In Chicago. For the
Speaker 3: longest time, there was no trauma center on the South
Speaker 3: side of Chicago. If you got shot, they took you
Speaker 3: by ambulance all the way to the north side. You
Speaker 3: know far that is traffic, So lots of people, all
Speaker 3: these cases of kids who would just die in the
Speaker 3: ambulance on the way. Now, how exactly is like a
Speaker 3: you know, some abstract argument about the Second Amendment going
Speaker 3: to fix the flight of somebody who's got to spend
Speaker 3: thirty five minutes in an ambulance to get to a
Speaker 3: trauma center. So it's like I just I just came
Speaker 3: to the conclusion that there's a lot of people in
Speaker 3: this country who are deeply invested in these debates that
Speaker 3: have been going on for uh, you know, for decades now,
Speaker 3: and they're just out of touch with and even something
Speaker 3: as simple this is maybe gonna get me a little trouble.
Speaker 3: But what do we when we talk about gun buns
Speaker 3: in this country? We spend a huge amount of time
Speaker 3: talking about mass shootings. Mass shootings are statistically a drop
Speaker 3: in the bucket, They're rare, and so we're consumed with
Speaker 3: the very tiny part of the problem that happens to
Speaker 3: affect middle class right, and then the rest of it
Speaker 3: is like whatever, kind of shrugging whatever.
Speaker 2: I got so many questions based off what you just said.
Speaker 2: Back to the subway thing real quick. Yes, I don't
Speaker 2: think handguns everybody having a handgun on the subway will
Speaker 2: make things safer, But people do feel safer when they see.
Speaker 1: Police officers with handguns on the sub absolutely.
Speaker 3: How do you explain that, Well, because the police officer
Speaker 3: knows how to use the gun. The problem, well, I
Speaker 3: mean problem with a handgun is so hilarious. You talk
Speaker 3: to people who actually know a lot about guns and
Speaker 3: they will tell you it is so hard to hit
Speaker 3: some hit what you want to hit with a handgun,
Speaker 3: particularly if you're not an expert and you're terrified. So like,
Speaker 3: if two people have a shootout on a subway cars,
Speaker 3: they're gonna hit everybody. They're gonna be like, it's gonna
Speaker 3: be Mayhem Like Yeah, this idea that everyone is cool
Speaker 3: under pressure when they're making a life or that decision
Speaker 3: with a hand is nuts. Even police, well even police
Speaker 3: officers don't always hit what they're supposed to hit. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had a really fun discussion with a prosecutor in
Speaker 3: Brooklyn on this very question, and he was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I've been doing this for whatever twenty years, He's I
Speaker 3: get even even cops rarely shoot straight, So why would
Speaker 3: we want to introduce more guns into a closed steel
Speaker 3: box running under the East River? You know, like it's
Speaker 3: just the but like it's just the thing that's weird.
Speaker 3: Is just how out of touch? What I really my
Speaker 3: real point was not to get into an argument about
Speaker 3: guns on the subway, is was the idea that our
Speaker 3: policy is being made in this country by a bunch
Speaker 3: of people who are completely out of touch.
Speaker 2: Already out of touch are our gun lobby is just
Speaker 2: too in their pockets because I mean when you look
Speaker 2: at Post yeah.
Speaker 3: You know it's they're just making these sort of abstract
Speaker 3: legal arguments. And you know, I sort of wanted to
Speaker 3: why are they even debating gun control in Washington? Why
Speaker 3: don't they They should take that show on the road.
Speaker 3: Let's let's put them on the A train at eight
Speaker 3: o'clock at night and then show them. Okay, let's what
Speaker 3: do you think would happen if six people on this
Speaker 3: in this car right now we're carrying a handgun. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're just there has to we have to do something
Speaker 3: to kind of reconnect the conversation.
Speaker 1: Why do you think we as Americans are so obsessed
Speaker 1: with guns?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I'm Canadian, So that's why I say
Speaker 3: we I'm looking here. No, I was gonna say, I
Speaker 3: didn't mean that I was, but like so it's just,
Speaker 3: you know, we're just to the North Settle roughly the
Speaker 3: same time by people from Europe and you know, and whatever.
Speaker 3: I mean, the history is parallel, but we're not obsessed
Speaker 3: with I've never been able to wrap my mind around well,
Speaker 3: I don't have it. What I'm saying is I can't
Speaker 3: answer that question because I grew up in Canada and
Speaker 3: where there's no guns. I didn't see a gun till
Speaker 3: like you got to be until I got over here,
Speaker 3: So I don't know you could. I suppose there's all
Speaker 3: kinds of complicated historical reasons for that. But it's weird.
Speaker 3: How kind of gun focused.
Speaker 2: Is it the legislation you think? I mean, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know a gun law in Canada.
Speaker 3: So yeah, well so if you watch, this is not
Speaker 3: an answer to the question out of but if you watch,
Speaker 3: there's a category of Canadian Westerns. So the same idea,
Speaker 3: some guy out on the range and the you know
Speaker 3: in the in the frontier, like bringing justice. In Canadian Westerns,
Speaker 3: the mounty not a not a not a sheriff, but
Speaker 3: like he spends all of his time like pulling dogs
Speaker 3: out of the river and like helping middle old ladies.
Speaker 3: He doesn't even carry a gun. Like in the Canadian
Speaker 3: fantasy of the wild West. It's like, you know, somebody,
Speaker 3: somebody lost a cow and they call. In the American fantasy,
Speaker 3: it's like people are So there's something about the fantasies.
Speaker 3: Right from the beginning, there was a weird set of
Speaker 3: fantasies that get attached to I think TV. I did
Speaker 3: an episode of this series on this gun series on
Speaker 3: visions History that looked that was all about gun smoke.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It was the longest running Western absolutely, and we did.
Speaker 3: One of the things we did is we calculated, so
Speaker 3: Gunsmoke takes place in Dodge City in Kansas, and we
Speaker 3: tried to calculate, based on the TV show, what would
Speaker 3: the homae what's the homicide rate in the fictional Dodge
Speaker 3: City And the answer is it's like eighty times higher
Speaker 3: than than the highest homicide rate in a real American city.
Speaker 3: So in our fantasy world, we created an America that
Speaker 3: is infinitely more dangerous and scary than the real America.
Speaker 3: Right And by the way, Gun Smoke was on TV
Speaker 3: for twenty years. It was it was on for twenty years,
Speaker 3: twenty years. It's one of those popular TV shows yea
Speaker 3: both time, and it was peddling a kind of vision
Speaker 3: of American life that was again out of touch.
Speaker 2: Do you think that is because the media is always leading.
Speaker 2: They would say, if it bleeds, it leads, So we
Speaker 2: think that America is way worse than it actually is
Speaker 2: because of the news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think. Well, it's you know, it's an
Speaker 3: odd thing I got. Really, you know, when Ron DeSantis
Speaker 3: was running around lecturing New yorker is on how dangerous
Speaker 3: New York is. Meanwhile, New York and New York State
Speaker 3: are so much safer than Florida. Florida, you want to
Speaker 3: go someplace and put your life in your hands, go
Speaker 3: to Jacksonville.
Speaker 1: Jackie and kill Wow.
Speaker 3: The idea, The idea that the governor of one of
Speaker 3: the most violent states in the country is lecturing New
Speaker 3: Yorkers New York City, New York City and New York State,
Speaker 3: by the way, one of the safest regions of the country,
Speaker 3: the idea, and nobody he got a free pass. Everyone
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, New York must be more dangerous from Florida.
Speaker 1: No, the opposite.
Speaker 3: So it's like, it is, it's, it's it's it is
Speaker 3: a fascination with this kind of violence, coupled with a
Speaker 3: set of like completely unexamined assumptions about what's dangerous in America,
Speaker 3: where the danger is or like honestly, like google Jacksonville
Speaker 3: and then you will never go to Jacksonville again.
Speaker 2: That's all gave somebody doggy in a day from Jacksonville.
Speaker 2: I don't know why Malcolm shooting at Jacksonville this morning,
Speaker 2: but something happened to Malcolm and jacksonvilleing and then.
Speaker 3: We have all from Jacksonville. I like, but I should
Speaker 3: say I have been to Jacksonville many times. Parts of
Speaker 3: Jacksonville are quite lovely. But like, the governor of Florida
Speaker 3: should not be lecturing us about violence, is all I
Speaker 3: have to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, damn do ball your city caught one this morning?
Speaker 2: You said that people, uh, people were not with the
Speaker 2: kind coversation we're not having about guns.
Speaker 1: What is that? Is it about the people?
Speaker 2: Because I feel like as they always have conversations about
Speaker 2: gun control, but they never talk about the people who
Speaker 2: actually own the guns.
Speaker 3: There's there's that, there is the well, there's there's all
Speaker 3: kinds of sort of weird things that we're not talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're not talking about I did that episode on trauma centers.
Speaker 3: We're not talking about the fact that, uh, hospitals, trauma
Speaker 3: centers should be where the victims of gun violence are.
Speaker 3: And we have a system right now in this country
Speaker 3: where we don't always sometimes we do we don't always
Speaker 3: put medical facilities where they're needed. We put them where
Speaker 3: they make the most money. And so that's one thing
Speaker 3: we don't talk a lot about when we should that
Speaker 3: it's a huge issue. You know. One of the episodes
Speaker 3: in the series, I looked at the question of a
Speaker 3: homicide rate at any A murder rate at any given
Speaker 3: time is a function of two things. One is how
Speaker 3: much violence there is, and the second is how good
Speaker 3: How good is the medical care. Right, If you get
Speaker 3: shot and you get taken directly to the hospital and
Speaker 3: they save your life, you're not a homicide victim. If
Speaker 3: the same thing happens and you don't get to the
Speaker 3: hospital time and you die, you are a homicide victim. Right.
Speaker 3: So a lot depends on how good your hospital system is,
Speaker 3: and a huge amount if we have situations like in Chicago.
Speaker 3: They did a study and they showed that if you
Speaker 3: were black, you traveled a lot further to a trauma
Speaker 3: center than if you were white. Right, Like, that's something
Speaker 3: that's the kind of thing you should talk about.
Speaker 1: Big something.
Speaker 3: You know, you could save a lot of lives if
Speaker 3: you cite another thing.
Speaker 1: We maybe didn't not trying to save. Maybe that's the point.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's I think it's in it's in its indifference
Speaker 3: more than or just like you know, uh, the the
Speaker 3: amount of oxygen, like I said before, the amount of
Speaker 3: oxygen that gets taken up by heart obsession with mass
Speaker 3: shootings when they're the terrible thing, but they are they
Speaker 3: are so a tiny, such a tiny, tiny part of
Speaker 3: the problem. The idea that that's all we kind of
Speaker 3: talk about it about it is weird. But also the
Speaker 3: idea that you know, in every profession, when anytime, anytime
Speaker 3: people have an area of specialized knowledge, they're usually invested
Speaker 3: in making sure that not any kind of you know,
Speaker 3: if you're a doctor, you're powerfully invested in the idea
Speaker 3: that you got to go to med school before you
Speaker 3: can practice medicine. You don't want any yahoo breck, you know,
Speaker 3: like you yeah, But gun owners will simultaneously go on
Speaker 3: and on and on legitimately about how much knowledge you
Speaker 3: need to handle a gun safely and fired accurately, and
Speaker 3: at the same time they're like, but everyone should be
Speaker 3: able to get one at the job of a hat.
Speaker 3: That's just dumb. It should be the gun owners who
Speaker 3: are supporting restrictions around gun use, because they're the ones
Speaker 3: who are aware of how legitimately difficult it is to
Speaker 3: handle a gun safely and appropriately. I don't get it.
Speaker 3: I don't understand why gun control isn't being pushed by
Speaker 3: gun lovers, right. You know. It's like I said, like
Speaker 3: I you know, I'm a big runner. I'm the last
Speaker 3: person who says everyone should run and it's hard. Take
Speaker 3: it seriously. You know what you're doing. You gotta, like,
Speaker 3: you know, prepare for it. I don't say you have
Speaker 3: a right to everyone should have a right to run
Speaker 3: ten miles in the morning.
Speaker 2: Maybe gun levels are in a bubble because they know
Speaker 2: how to use their guns. They you know, they go
Speaker 2: to the gun range all the time. People around them
Speaker 2: probably know how to use their gun and go to
Speaker 2: the gun range when their mind, they're just assuming if
Speaker 2: you have a gun, you know how to use it,
Speaker 2: you know how.
Speaker 3: I think that's probably maybe They's what I spent one
Speaker 3: of the episodes. I go down to North Carolina and
Speaker 3: I hang out with this guy, Greg Wallace, who's a
Speaker 3: He said, he loves guns. He's a just competitive shooting
Speaker 3: and gave me a kind of we fired assault rifle
Speaker 3: and he gave me a tutorial on how to do it.
Speaker 3: And just from spending an afternoon with him. That's the
Speaker 3: thing I came away from. It's like you need it's hard.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of and you know the amount of
Speaker 3: caution he took, Like when I when I picked up
Speaker 3: the assault rifle and picked up the wrong way, he was,
Speaker 3: you know, like, don't you know? Like it was it
Speaker 3: was a real kind of Uh it was. It was
Speaker 3: fascinating just to see how in their own little world
Speaker 3: they're super gotious around.
Speaker 1: How do you feelhen you fight that thing though? How'd
Speaker 1: you feel? Malcolm? Huh? You get a rush?
Speaker 3: Jesus did I get a rush? The first time I've
Speaker 3: ever picked up a gun in my life?
Speaker 1: Yeah, first time.
Speaker 3: First time in a shooting range in rural North Carolina,
Speaker 3: an ar fifteen And uh I felt. First of all,
Speaker 3: I was, it's really loud. You had a head I had,
Speaker 3: I had things on, but it was still loud. It
Speaker 3: was creepy at first. And then you with that you
Speaker 3: can't help it.
Speaker 1: You get a little rush.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like these things are big and heavy. Like the
Speaker 3: idea that you have in your hands, something that you
Speaker 3: could kill someone with is just strange.
Speaker 1: If he's never held a gun, have you have? I
Speaker 1: shot a gun. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I never shot an the sault rifle though, like an
Speaker 2: AAR fifteen or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know handgun, yeah, like.
Speaker 2: A little like a lower one, the lower part. I
Speaker 2: mean we got a three fifty seven of the house
Speaker 2: on the glock of the house. Oh okay, what what
Speaker 2: are your thoughts on assault rifles now after using one?
Speaker 3: Well, I did that episode and it was the one
Speaker 3: that got the most male basically saying I think salt
Speaker 3: rifle bands are a dumb idea, and they're dumb because
Speaker 3: they're not actually banning assault rifles. Assaut rifle is a
Speaker 3: kind of platform, and what assaut rifle bands do is
Speaker 3: identify if you accessorize your gun with a certain number
Speaker 3: of cosmetic things. We think that's bad and we want
Speaker 3: to ban them, but they it's a semi automatic rifle
Speaker 3: with a large magazine. Those are you know, those are
Speaker 3: until you can Still they're still legal in many states
Speaker 3: asault rifle bands. So it's like kind of weird that
Speaker 3: why are we identifying a class of weapons because they
Speaker 3: look ugly and saying we should. But the other thing
Speaker 3: is like it's the amount of damage they can do,
Speaker 3: but we're not. We're not banning so rifles. Rifles are
Speaker 3: are very you know, they're semi automatic rifles are a
Speaker 3: very lethal weapon. We're not banning semi auomatic rifles. Within
Speaker 3: assault rifle ban we're banning a tiny subcategory that happened
Speaker 3: to have a certain number of cosmetic features that we
Speaker 3: don't like. So it's like we're not solving the problem.
Speaker 3: And then I sat down with this trauma surgeon in
Speaker 3: DC who had studied mass shootings and it's like, if
Speaker 3: that's what's what's you're worried about, is mass shootings? Actually
Speaker 3: the most lethal weapon used in mass shootings is are handguns,
Speaker 3: because a handgun gets into the grizzly. But you within
Speaker 3: assault rifle, you shoot once the person goes down, and
Speaker 3: because it's boom right then with a handgun, you shoot
Speaker 3: once and sometimes person doesn't go down, so you're more
Speaker 3: likely to be shot twice. You're shot by a handgun
Speaker 3: and the guy gets up closer and shoots you a
Speaker 3: second time, and he is more likely to kill you.
Speaker 3: So you're more likely to die from a handgun than
Speaker 3: a sult rifle in a mass shooting, which just says,
Speaker 3: by the way, which is a all we're saying is
Speaker 3: guns are dangerous, they're used in different ways, and to
Speaker 3: have as a to spend all of our time and
Speaker 3: energy trying to remove one tiny subcategory of guns from
Speaker 3: the equation and the hopes is going to change things.
Speaker 3: It's just dumb. It's just like the problem is much
Speaker 3: bigger than that. You're not solving it by by by by,
Speaker 3: you know, by taking some pair of scissors to one
Speaker 3: page of the gun manual.
Speaker 1: Right, So what is the solutions then? How to kind
Speaker 1: of control of the America gets lit broken out of?
Speaker 2: We think that, Yeah, he's from cannabis, so he can't.
Speaker 3: When I talked to that guy at Della Price in
Speaker 3: the last the last of the episodes, which by the way,
Speaker 3: one of the most so I sat with. So he's
Speaker 3: a guy, he's in his thirties, big football big, incredibly
Speaker 3: moving and powerful and thoughtful guy.
Speaker 1: Just say he's sexy, Malcolm. First of all, Malcolm is sexy.
Speaker 1: I talked it is a big sexy.
Speaker 3: I knew, I knew. I just knew what I was like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna describe. I'm just going to get in trouble.
Speaker 3: Uh the he is he a handsome man? Yes, he
Speaker 3: is a handsome man, charle man, if that's what you're asking,
Speaker 3: and he so. My point is he's talking about one
Speaker 3: of the things he does is he goes into elementary
Speaker 3: and middle schools in the South Chicago hands out first
Speaker 3: responder kids, teaches the kids how to minister first eight
Speaker 3: if the first because it's a reality, No terrible, that
Speaker 3: kind of I mean, it's just what he was describing that,
Speaker 3: it's just like it's so heartbreaking and children. What he
Speaker 3: would say is and what he talked about it is,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of gun violence is kids, is
Speaker 3: disputes between young people who don't know how to resolve
Speaker 3: their disputes peaceably. And you have to teach people a
Speaker 3: kind of an emotional vocabulary that allows them to have
Speaker 3: an argument without pulling a gun.
Speaker 1: But that's a whole other thing for us.
Speaker 2: Serious and now you're talking about mental health and social
Speaker 2: remoa learning and.
Speaker 3: Maybe if we just maybe if we just put the
Speaker 3: gun control conversation on hold and said, all right, we'll
Speaker 3: get back to this when the time comes. It's it's important,
Speaker 3: but it's not as important as what you're just talking about.
Speaker 3: Is you've got kids. You know, Little Price was talking
Speaker 3: about on in the neighborhoods where he works. It's you know,
Speaker 3: we're talking about multi generational beefs, like you shot my cousin,
Speaker 3: so I shot your brother. You know, like you have
Speaker 3: to unravel that cycle, and that takes a lot of
Speaker 3: time and a lot of care and a lot of attention.
Speaker 3: And you know, if we just focused on trying to
Speaker 3: unravel that for a while and see if we make
Speaker 3: any headway, that strikes me as being a really productive
Speaker 3: way to kind of tact the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, why do that makes so much sense?
Speaker 2: It makes so much sense because you probably can get
Speaker 2: people to move on that faster than you ever will
Speaker 2: get them to move on actual gun control.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't see any reason why people on both sides
Speaker 3: of the political fence shouldn't couldn't rally around around that.
Speaker 3: Like why do we pick a we we choose a
Speaker 3: fight that we know is the most divisive fight we
Speaker 3: can possibly have, and that has zero chance of getting anywhere.
Speaker 3: We're not getting anywhere with the court we have with
Speaker 3: gun control unhappy, So like, why do we just bang
Speaker 3: our heads against the wall. Why don't we do something
Speaker 3: that would have more effective?
Speaker 2: Can I pivot a little bit if you don't want
Speaker 2: to talk about it, I understand, But you know, the
Speaker 2: whole Palestine Israel conflict.
Speaker 1: Is that? What?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: What is?
Speaker 2: What do you think the larger global ramifications of what
Speaker 2: we're watching right now will be ultimately.
Speaker 1: I have I have no idea.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so beyond my that's a that's not
Speaker 3: something that I've ever It's just all I All I
Speaker 3: know is that it's heartbreaking, that's allid Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, six part series.
Speaker 3: Tell us what you got a book?
Speaker 1: You're still working on the next book too?
Speaker 3: Well, now I've I'm I'm working. I put my my, my,
Speaker 3: uh Tom Bradley book on hold and which turned into
Speaker 3: it turned into a book about anger and all this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's not about Tom Bradley anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, I got interested in so it is. But what
Speaker 3: I got really interested in.
Speaker 4: Is is is I got interested in when what strategies
Speaker 4: are available to the angry? Because it was it turned
Speaker 4: into this book about what it meant to be black
Speaker 4: in if you lived in Los Angeles in the thirties
Speaker 4: and forties, and this group of black guys.
Speaker 3: Who all go to U c.
Speaker 1: L A.
Speaker 3: In the thirties Tom Bradley, Jackie Robinson, Wally Strode, a
Speaker 3: bunch of people who go on to have really big career.
Speaker 3: Was it was a huge actor in Hollywood, a guy
Speaker 3: named Washington who was a big NFL player. And they're
Speaker 3: like the only black people on the UCLA campus. They
Speaker 3: all live in South Central and they all have different
Speaker 3: strategies for dealing with the fact. You know, they were
Speaker 3: all on the UCLA football team and they played the
Speaker 3: big game was against u USC and they got hung
Speaker 3: in it. Basically, a US fraternity on the USC campus
Speaker 3: has a mock lynching the black players on the UCLA
Speaker 3: team and they hang them, hang them in effigy outside
Speaker 3: the frat just before the big game between you see,
Speaker 3: this is what's going on in their lives, right and
Speaker 3: I turned I've turned the book into an examination of
Speaker 3: what are the strategies available to you if you're in
Speaker 3: that kind of situation. They're angry, right as you would
Speaker 3: be if you grew up in La Black in the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties, and each of them, of the people I'm profiling,
Speaker 3: has a different strategy for dealing with that anger. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a one path is confrontation. I just start shouting.
Speaker 3: And there's a woman living in ceuth Citul. It's an
Speaker 3: incredible woman living in South Central who I write about.
Speaker 3: Who's that's her? That's what she does. She just stands
Speaker 3: up and starts shouting until people. And then the other
Speaker 3: path is the Tom Bradley path, where you take all
Speaker 3: of your anger and you button it up. And he
Speaker 3: never This is a man, you know, first black mayor
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles endures the most unspeakable kind of experienced
Speaker 3: racist experiences trying to come to political power in LA
Speaker 3: and never once you know, let's on that he's been
Speaker 3: affected by it. I mean, he just is this serene.
Speaker 3: And that's another strategy is you just pretend it doesn't exist, right,
Speaker 3: you turn yourself into someone else that's not good.
Speaker 1: You're suppressing it.
Speaker 3: Well, they're all. What I'm interested in is there's no
Speaker 3: perfect strategy. There's each strategy has a set of of
Speaker 3: of costs and benefits and it's up to the person
Speaker 3: to just to to figure out what the right right.
Speaker 3: And you know, everyone, not everyone, you guys have all
Speaker 3: you've all done this in your life, right. You have
Speaker 3: sat down on some level, maybe not consciously, but you've
Speaker 3: sat down and you've figured out how am I going
Speaker 3: to deal with the baggage I'm carrying? Right? And you've
Speaker 3: made compromises that you know, to yourself to those around you.
Speaker 3: You have other times you've said, I'm not going to compromise,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be right. That's the I want to
Speaker 3: describe that process because it strikes me as being anyone
Speaker 3: who has ever been on the wrong side of a
Speaker 3: power equation has had to go through that process in
Speaker 3: everyone right, and I want to figure out I want
Speaker 3: to kind of write a kind of guidebook to how
Speaker 3: you do that.
Speaker 2: But you know what you said, you talked to any
Speaker 2: psychiatrists and therapists, because before I started going to therapy,
Speaker 2: I would just either suppressed like those emotions or conformed,
Speaker 2: you know, in a lot of cases. And that was
Speaker 2: actually a big life lesson that I learned dealing with
Speaker 2: an individual like yo. I'm never compromising myself for anyone.
Speaker 2: So did you talk to any psychiatrist and therapists.
Speaker 3: On people that did the work I mean on that book,
Speaker 3: I'm only halfway okay, So I'm getting yeah, I'm getting
Speaker 3: I'm I'm right now. I'm I'm just doing the part
Speaker 3: where I'm describing the like I have a whole chapter
Speaker 3: on the the whole group of there's a whole group
Speaker 3: of comics, comedians living in South Central in the thirties
Speaker 3: and forties and who are allowed to be in movies
Speaker 3: in LA only of course, if they conformed to a
Speaker 3: certain right. There's the guy Jack Benny's sidekick what's his name,
Speaker 3: I've forgotten, who has to play this kind of stupid butler, right,
Speaker 3: but he has little opportunities to kind of fight back,
Speaker 3: but he has to. That's those are the rules, and
Speaker 3: you want.
Speaker 1: To be and yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Got to that. That kind of women. Eddie Anderson, Eddie
Speaker 3: have a whole thing, a whole chapter on Eddie Anderson,
Speaker 3: who fascinating, Yeah, fascinating. He's the mayor of Central Avenue.
Speaker 3: He's this huge figure in South central the UH in
Speaker 3: the thirties and forties. And know, he's one of the
Speaker 3: most he might be one of the most famous black
Speaker 3: men in America in if you talked to us, if
Speaker 3: you went to a white person from Iowa in nineteen
Speaker 3: forty seven and said, you know, name three black people,
Speaker 3: he would be one of them, to be him and
Speaker 3: Joe Louis and yeah, you know. So he's a huge figure.
Speaker 3: We've forgotten now it's a huge But so I tell
Speaker 3: his one of the chapters about his extraordinary story.
Speaker 2: That's interesting because some people will say that that hasn't changed.
Speaker 2: Like you still if you're black, you still have to
Speaker 2: play a certain role, whether it's a hip hop movies
Speaker 2: or whatever in order to have success.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that's absolutely well.
Speaker 2: Listen, I know Malcolm Glawell has to leave the six
Speaker 2: part series. Revision is History is out right now. I
Speaker 2: love Revision History. I haven't gotten a chance to listen
Speaker 2: to the six part series, but I reference your McDonald's
Speaker 2: episode quite often, you know, quite often. But thank you
Speaker 2: for coming, my brother, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: It's Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 1: It's the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 3: Wake that answer up in the morning.
Speaker 1: Breakfast Club.