Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, I recently went on the podcast to
Speaker 1: one of my very favorite comedians Asan Minaj, and we
Speaker 1: had so much fun together, I thought we'd drop our
Speaker 1: conversation into the revisionist history feed. My only regret is
Speaker 1: that we didn't talk more about basketball, since he's a
Speaker 1: fanatic and I'm kind of a phanatic too. So have
Speaker 1: me back Asan and we can correct the oversight. Here
Speaker 1: you go, enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 2: Last thing, and I don't know if you got your
Speaker 2: pep and your step to do this, but you are
Speaker 2: very famous for giving people blurbs on the back of
Speaker 2: their book. Oh yeah, Now, first things first, what is
Speaker 2: a blurb? Because it sounds like a slur that you
Speaker 2: would hear in Harry Potter.
Speaker 1: You bloody blurb two cents three cents endorsement goes on
Speaker 1: the back of a book which says I read it,
Speaker 1: I liked it. You should read it too.
Speaker 3: Do you mind giving a blurb for this interview? Kim?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're the master of blurb.
Speaker 3: I've seen your blurbs on many different books at.
Speaker 1: Niz Hassan got me to cry. I wasn't expecting it.
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting that to happen. Anyone who can make
Speaker 1: their guests cry deserves a shout out. I would listen
Speaker 1: to Hassan doesn't Know on a regular basis from now on.
Speaker 3: How are you prepared to be dazzled?
Speaker 1: Pare to be dazzled?
Speaker 2: Maybe no other writer epitomizes popular nonfiction like Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: He literally made nonfiction popular. Millions and millions of people
Speaker 2: have read his books, and that has gotten him in
Speaker 2: trouble with two groups, one snobs who hate popular things,
Speaker 2: and two people impacted by some of the ideas that
Speaker 2: Malcolm Gladwell helped make popular. So I sat down with
Speaker 2: Malcolm to talk about the incredible new season of his podcast,
Speaker 2: Provisionist History and the profound impact that it had on him.
Speaker 2: We shook me why his books have had such a
Speaker 2: wide appeal.
Speaker 1: What my books do is allow you to play with
Speaker 1: the world of ideas.
Speaker 3: And we get into his hot take on working from home.
Speaker 1: I'll never live that one down.
Speaker 3: I also asked him about that Blink cameo and White lotus.
Speaker 3: Was it a compliment or a snake diss? I mean,
Speaker 3: Mike White, what are you doing here? Are you coming from?
Speaker 3: My boy?
Speaker 2: Malcolm, and more importantly, are you casting me in season
Speaker 2: four or what? Because I am available? Do you prefer
Speaker 2: writing books or do you prefer podcasting?
Speaker 1: Well? I like them both because it's so different. It's
Speaker 1: like saying, do you prefer chicken to shrimp? I mean,
Speaker 1: I like them both, but there are hard to compare
Speaker 1: because there's things you want to do with podcasting that
Speaker 1: you can't do with writing, and vice versa. The thing
Speaker 1: I got tired of in writing books, I'm tired of
Speaker 1: it was too strong a word, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: get away from was I didn't like the insistence of
Speaker 1: my own voice. So the thing that's lovely about podcasting
Speaker 1: is or the kind of narrative audio storytelling that I do,
Speaker 1: is that I get to recede and what I'm doing
Speaker 1: is collecting other people's voices.
Speaker 2: I mean, your books have permeated culture in a way
Speaker 2: that is so It's so Hudson News Stand deep Like,
Speaker 2: there is not a year that I have traveled where
Speaker 2: I have not seen a Malcolm Gladwell book at an
Speaker 2: airport in the United States of America. Did you see
Speaker 2: the cameo of Blink You on season one of White Lotus?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, how'd you feel about that?
Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
Speaker 3: Shane was reading it. This is a moment.
Speaker 1: I did love that. I love that show.
Speaker 2: How did you feel about the way Mike White described
Speaker 2: this moment? So this is what Mike White said about it.
Speaker 2: Blink just felt like such a Norman book. It seems
Speaker 2: like he's stoking his curiosity, but it hasn't gone very deep.
Speaker 2: Gladwell's the kind of writer that makes you feel smart
Speaker 2: while you're reading it, whether you are or aren't.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love that. That's a very sweet thing to say.
Speaker 3: Don't you think some people think of this as a desk.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 2: I see this as a compliment. So he was writing that, like,
Speaker 2: that's why Shane is reading the book in it. But
Speaker 2: I think I'm like, hey, you create egalitarian, accessible stories
Speaker 2: that people can read.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's but it's I think if I maybe
Speaker 1: reading too deeply into that. But the way I would
Speaker 1: phrase it is most people, as part of their daily lives,
Speaker 1: don't have a chance to engage in the world of ideas.
Speaker 1: People's lives are full, they have kids, jobs, responsibilities. They're
Speaker 1: not reading the Journal of the American Sociological Society at
Speaker 1: night right, or they're not getting exposed to the latest
Speaker 1: theory about this or that and the other. There's no
Speaker 1: place for it. They don't and so they don't get them.
Speaker 1: They don't get a chance to quote unquote, if feeling
Speaker 1: smart means being able to play in the world of ideas,
Speaker 1: they have limited opportunities for that. What my books do
Speaker 1: is allow you to play with the world of ideas.
Speaker 1: I say, I'll go out and find cool ideas for you,
Speaker 1: arrange them, let you just indulge in them, see whether
Speaker 1: you like them, try them on for size, reject them
Speaker 1: if you want like. And that's the thing. The books
Speaker 1: have been successful because people have a They recognize the
Speaker 1: fact that once you leave college, you don't have easy
Speaker 1: access to right.
Speaker 2: Right yeah, yeah, just hours and hours of kind of free, open,
Speaker 2: guided time to explore big ideas, explore big ideas.
Speaker 1: I have the luxury of doing that for others, and
Speaker 1: that I think is a I think of that as
Speaker 1: a noble calling.
Speaker 2: How do you feel when people put what you do
Speaker 2: on this huge pedestal that you go these Malcolm Gladwell
Speaker 2: books are these seminal books for intellectualism.
Speaker 3: Do you feel like that's too big?
Speaker 2: Of a title because I had this with with my
Speaker 2: Netflix show as well with Patriot Act. People feel like
Speaker 2: these enfotainment shows are the same thing as being deep experts.
Speaker 2: Like if you watch Patriot Act and you see our
Speaker 2: episode about fentanyl, you're not a fentanyl expert. I'm not
Speaker 2: a fentanyl expert. Like I'm literally reading off a prompter
Speaker 2: and I learned about this like a month and a
Speaker 2: half ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think I do think that's too much,
Speaker 1: But I think what to the extent that what people
Speaker 1: are doing when they say that is expressing their enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: I'm happy because what they're what they're really saying is wow,
Speaker 1: I got to play in this world of ideas and
Speaker 1: it is way more fun than I thought. That's cool,
Speaker 1: That's what they're saying. Yeah, and they don't, and you're
Speaker 1: capturing that a moment in time, because usually what happens
Speaker 1: then is they feel emboldened to go on on their
Speaker 1: own and discover other stuff. And so the moment when
Speaker 1: they think that, you know, Outliers, was the be all
Speaker 1: end all, it passes because they then start to discover
Speaker 1: on their own other ideas that complement their understanding of
Speaker 1: the world and they fall in love with some other thing.
Speaker 1: I'm the gateway drug. I'm not. I'm not the addiction.
Speaker 2: Is is your dream that it gets them on a
Speaker 2: path to being Like I need to access scientific research.
Speaker 1: But I want to be the first thing. I want
Speaker 1: to be the first thing you read, not the last
Speaker 1: thing you read on that subject.
Speaker 2: I think one of your greatest gifts is probably your
Speaker 2: gift and ability to passionately tell a story. I feel
Speaker 2: like you could tell a story literally about anything and
Speaker 2: get me engaged, Like could you do a revisionist history
Speaker 2: about W twos and W nine's.
Speaker 3: Like how would you attack that?
Speaker 2: Like give us a little bit of that Gladwell juice
Speaker 2: of Like how do you take these very mundane topics
Speaker 2: and make them super duper interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a tough one. I have to look
Speaker 1: into it a little bit. I've been doing this a
Speaker 1: version of this right now because I've been working on
Speaker 1: this project about American gun violence, and i want to
Speaker 1: tell a story about American gun violence and not talk
Speaker 1: about guns, not at all. You got to talk about
Speaker 1: kinds of sumptions. I'm interested in exploring all the all
Speaker 1: the peculiarities of the way America and think about gun
Speaker 1: violence that have that aren't the ones we normally think about.
Speaker 1: And so there's one. There's one where I do an
Speaker 1: entire chapter on the Second Amendment, which is all about
Speaker 1: this is the grammar of the Second Amendment and understanding
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century if you wrote a sentence like that,
Speaker 1: which is it's a sentence that begins with an absolute
Speaker 1: clause and then has the operative clause, and the absolute
Speaker 1: clause is what's called it an initial being clause. Particular
Speaker 1: kind of absolute clause, and initial being clauses loom really
Speaker 1: large in the grammar of the eighteenth century in a
Speaker 1: way they don't now. And so the whole thing is
Speaker 1: all about eighteenth century grammar. And it is like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I pulled it off because no one
Speaker 1: else has read it. It's a draft, no one else
Speaker 1: has read it.
Speaker 2: But this, essentially, this is like a funk masterflex. Can
Speaker 2: we get a bomb on this? Can we get a
Speaker 2: bomb drop a hot ninety something bomb drop on this?
Speaker 2: This could be the next this could be the exclusive,
Speaker 2: This is your jay Z hot ninety something, this, this
Speaker 2: is me, this is this could be the next book.
Speaker 1: Well, this is a chap during the next book, Well.
Speaker 2: Just drop a bomb on a flex. Go ahead, did
Speaker 2: a bomb? Just drop We're gonna do it in a post.
Speaker 1: Okay, but it's possible. I did not succeed in this,
Speaker 1: But I got so deep into eighteenth century grammar. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting about it is that you realize the whole
Speaker 1: point of going on this incredibly nerdy grammatical path is
Speaker 1: to make you understand that when the Supreme Court passes
Speaker 1: opinions on the Second Amendment, they are making shit up.
Speaker 1: They have no clue what they're talking about, and anyone
Speaker 1: who knows what they're talking about is like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is nuts. To pass a ruling about gun rights
Speaker 1: based on our understanding of the Second Amendment requires it
Speaker 1: to interpret the Second Amendment because it's a sentence that
Speaker 1: actually makes no sense. It's a pre modern sentence. It's
Speaker 1: like not a sentence we'd ever write today, right, And
Speaker 1: they presume to interpret the sentence without knowing any thing
Speaker 1: about linguistics, in particular, without learning anything about historical linguistics.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. You can't read a sentence from seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: three or whatever it was in as as someone living
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five and makes sense of it. You've
Speaker 1: got to talk to people who knew what the way
Speaker 1: people phrase things. In seventeen eighty three got it right.
Speaker 1: And they didn't do that. They just thought, oh, I
Speaker 1: can pull out Websters the Dictionary off the shelf and
Speaker 1: just tell you what the words mean.
Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 1: If you did this for a paper in college, you
Speaker 1: would get a C minus.
Speaker 2: You are very good at coining particular terms that catch
Speaker 2: like wildfire, tipping point for example, obviously your super popular
Speaker 2: book that came out in two thousand, Tipping Point. I
Speaker 2: read it, many people read it. What is it about
Speaker 2: certain terms that make them just catch on like wildfire?
Speaker 2: Like I'll give an example.
Speaker 3: You know the.
Speaker 2: Term bucket list? Okay, that term came from this movie.
Speaker 2: There was a movie called The bucket List with Jack
Speaker 2: Nicholson and more startment with it starts with this.
Speaker 1: It was not used.
Speaker 2: It does not pre date this movie. Yeah, like in
Speaker 2: social lexicon, it's not crazy. But my question is is
Speaker 2: how do you know that something is going to catch
Speaker 2: like that?
Speaker 1: You don't, I mean, how could you know? I mean
Speaker 1: you can, you can. It can sound good.
Speaker 2: To you, but but picking a title is pretty big,
Speaker 2: like picking a title.
Speaker 3: You know this.
Speaker 2: You're sitting with this PDF, you're reviewing it, you're revising it.
Speaker 2: It's like naming an album.
Speaker 3: You go, okay, this is this is the phrase.
Speaker 1: I mean. I have a theory about what a title,
Speaker 1: what the perfect title is, although none of my books
Speaker 1: have ever had the perfect title. The perfect title is
Speaker 1: a oxymoron. So there has to be some tension between
Speaker 1: the two kind of operative words in the title. So
Speaker 1: the famous environmental book for the sixties, Silent Spring, is
Speaker 1: to my mind, to perfect title. Silent and spring are
Speaker 1: in opposition to each other, Right, it's an oxymoron. No
Speaker 1: Spring is silent, and she's giving us she's that with
Speaker 1: two words, we instantly know that there's stakes, something has
Speaker 1: been right. She's taken two very very very sure, familiar
Speaker 1: simple words, and by pairing them has just created this
Speaker 1: whole understanding of what's going on. Right, So I've always
Speaker 1: That's what I've always strived for. The title of my podcast,
Speaker 1: Revision's History is not quite that, but it's a it is.
Speaker 1: The tension is that that term is something that's usually
Speaker 1: used as a term of disparagement, and so I am
Speaker 1: suggesting that something that's usually disparaging is actually worth listening to.
Speaker 2: Can you help me coin some terms these things that
Speaker 2: I've been feeling. As a comedian, I use comedy as
Speaker 2: a way to, in a healthy way, chance all my
Speaker 2: add and internal feelings into something that is useful and
Speaker 2: possibly provides people joy and comfort. Can you help me
Speaker 2: come up with a term that describes the urge that
Speaker 2: men above forty have to want to engage in devour history,
Speaker 2: you know how, like dads who are forty four years
Speaker 2: old and they're like, I'm super into Ken Burns. Now,
Speaker 2: what is that.
Speaker 1: So true?
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, the bad term I have is dad stalgia.
Speaker 2: But that like that, it's not it's not singing. It's
Speaker 2: not singing, baby, help me make it sing. You know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. It never occurred
Speaker 1: to me till now. It makes me happy that you
Speaker 1: have identified this thing and you're what's right about this
Speaker 1: is that it is absolutely the case that like there's
Speaker 1: a moment when they're all the species of dad. It's
Speaker 1: like there's suddenly it's all about General Patton.
Speaker 2: It's a species of dude. Yes, it is a species
Speaker 2: of heterosexual man.
Speaker 1: Second, war is all.
Speaker 2: I'm going to keep giving you the exposition. Hopefully this
Speaker 2: sparks something. I'm talking about A type of guy. See,
Speaker 2: here's what happens is in your childhood, your teens, your twenties,
Speaker 2: your thirties, you're like, how does the world work? Okay, shit,
Speaker 2: that will hurt me?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: What is a bank account? Wells Fargo, got it? This
Speaker 2: is a checkbook? Checks are stupid. This is a credit card,
Speaker 2: Holy shit, interest rates are high. Finally got a job.
Speaker 2: This is how you talk to people. I think I'm awkward.
Speaker 2: I should probably go to therapy. You do all these things.
Speaker 2: Then you come of a certain age and you're like, whoa,
Speaker 2: I kind of get the world and then you're like,
Speaker 2: how the fuck did we get here? And then you
Speaker 2: dive into civil war by ken Burns, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's like, but also it's about then that
Speaker 1: word what's that word?
Speaker 3: Because it is.
Speaker 1: You're also hearkening back to at the moment that you're
Speaker 1: beginning to lose your grip on your own masculinity kind
Speaker 1: of physical force, you're HARKing back to a time when
Speaker 1: those were the things that mattered the most. Right, It's
Speaker 1: like it's like, you know, it's Testoster gone. It's like
Speaker 1: it's I don't know what to it is, but that's
Speaker 1: part of it. It is longing for not just longing
Speaker 1: for a lost era, but it's a longing for a
Speaker 1: lost version of yourself. At the time when you could
Speaker 1: no longer be a soldier, you are starting to sort
Speaker 1: of indulge the stories and lives of soldiers. Right. You
Speaker 1: don't do it when you're twenty five because you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: that's me, like being slaughtered in the trenches or whatever.
Speaker 1: But when you're forty five or fifty, it's safe. It's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't I wouldn't be called up if we went
Speaker 1: to war. So now I can kind of I can
Speaker 1: stay home and watch Saving Private Rhine for the third time.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm just like, I'm just still dwelling on Testospy. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's move on to the next concept, because I don't
Speaker 2: want to dwell on this. What I love about you
Speaker 2: is that you are willing to be proven wrong, and
Speaker 2: you talk about this in Revenge of the Tipping Point. Dude,
Speaker 2: your Ted talk was nuts. How did you feel about
Speaker 2: that Ted talk where you basically were like my bad.
Speaker 1: I know. The thing is, it's a flips that I
Speaker 1: was saying earlier because I don't have it. Because I
Speaker 1: get such delight in personal delight in finding out that
Speaker 1: something I thought was one way is another. It never
Speaker 1: occurs to me that there's any public cost to speaking
Speaker 1: about that out loud. Right, It's like, it's fine, Like
Speaker 1: and if you're someone who likes my writing, you're used
Speaker 1: to that, and you're you understand that what the game
Speaker 1: we're playing here is we're playing in the world of ideas.
Speaker 1: Ideas change, So we're gonna every now and again we're
Speaker 1: going to pull up states.
Speaker 2: You know, I got to give you credit, man, It
Speaker 2: was really it's very cool of you to say, hey,
Speaker 2: I was wrong about this, yeah, and then also add
Speaker 2: that into the blockchain because we also live in a
Speaker 2: society where it's deny, deny, defend, deny, deny, deny die.
Speaker 1: I don't understand this, because my understanding this is this,
Speaker 1: there's a whole series of cases where the perception of
Speaker 1: people at the kind of who have public roles and
Speaker 1: the perception of the rest of society are completely at odds.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't think the average American is at all
Speaker 1: distressed to learn that an author whose books they've read
Speaker 1: would stand up and say, you know what, that twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago and I wrote about that change my mind.
Speaker 1: I think I was wrong. I think most people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's great. You know why, because the common experience of
Speaker 1: most people in the world is that you have to
Speaker 1: change your mind all the time. Anyone who's had kids,
Speaker 1: all you do is change your positions. Used to be
Speaker 1: you're going to bed at seven, then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden at seven thirty and you're forced to confront the
Speaker 1: fact that the body of work that was devoted of
Speaker 1: parental work, that was devoted to seven PM as a bedtime,
Speaker 1: has gone out the window, and like there's no going back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it, right, So we're you like, but this there
Speaker 1: continues to be this perception among people in the public
Speaker 1: eye that if I do that, I'm somehow jeopardizing my credibility,
Speaker 1: which is so nonsensical to me. Why wouldn't it jeopardize
Speaker 1: your credibility if you refuse to change your mind in
Speaker 1: the face of a rapidly changing world, Like that's credit
Speaker 1: that someone who's like saying the same thing today as
Speaker 1: they said twenty five years ago. That is a threat
Speaker 1: to their credibility.
Speaker 2: I think that is a byproduct of people saying, in
Speaker 2: certain particular circles, you cannot say you're sorry. It will
Speaker 2: fuck up with your credibility. That's because I think people
Speaker 2: have noticed some of the most powerful people on planet
Speaker 2: Earth are psychopaths that do not apologize, and we live
Speaker 2: in their ecosystem. The shrapnel of their ideas affect us. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 2: Right, it's their ideas that they then push notification to
Speaker 2: the entire world, and we have to deal with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I interview these two people to the most impressive
Speaker 1: people I've ever met the other week Secretary of the
Speaker 1: Air Force and former Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
Speaker 1: So Secretary is a political appointe. Chief of staff runs
Speaker 1: the place. They knew each other. They were friends and
Speaker 1: when they were both running the Air Force. There's a
Speaker 1: mass shooter I forget where Oklahoma goes in and kills
Speaker 1: twenty five people in like a church. They get a
Speaker 1: call or in the morning that guy is an ex
Speaker 1: Air Force person, and then they get another call and
Speaker 1: by the way, he was drummed out of the Air
Speaker 1: Force dishonorably for committing some kind of act of violence
Speaker 1: involving a gun. And it was your responsibility to notify
Speaker 1: the FBI so that he would be on a list
Speaker 1: that wouldn't allow him to buy a gun. And you
Speaker 1: didn't do it right, Like shit, my institution screwed up,
Speaker 1: and as a result, this guy went out and killed
Speaker 1: twenty five people. So they have a meeting, and everyone
Speaker 1: in the meeting, all the top brass in Washington there,
Speaker 1: tells them go slow, let's work the South. There's maybe
Speaker 1: a weigh, some loopholes. And they're like, no, we screwed up.
Speaker 1: We're gonna just hold a press conference and say we
Speaker 1: screwed up. And so they go, they say we screwed up.
Speaker 1: They go towards Congress and they say, we blew it.
Speaker 1: We made a mistake, Like we've got to have better.
Speaker 1: We're going to find out all the people who are accountable.
Speaker 1: We're going to fix this thing.
Speaker 2: BA.
Speaker 1: And then there's a funeral for some of the people
Speaker 1: killed by that shooter. And the guy who's the chief
Speaker 1: of staff of the Air Force puts on his uniform,
Speaker 1: flies down to Texas, flies down to Texas and attends
Speaker 1: the funeral of the people who were killed because of
Speaker 1: ant of an air by his institution. And I said
Speaker 1: to him, Jesus, did you what did you think was
Speaker 1: going to happen? I didn't know what was going to happen,
Speaker 1: but it was my responsibility to go. And I was
Speaker 1: so it was so anithetical to everything about the way
Speaker 1: public servants behave popular expectations in popular culture. And it
Speaker 1: was two these two incredibly decent people who, by the way,
Speaker 1: they weren't personally responsible. It wasn't like they personally didn't
Speaker 1: report it. It was like something they run an organization
Speaker 1: with like one hundred thousand people. But they took responsibility.
Speaker 1: They took the heat before Congress. And then the guy
Speaker 1: puts on his uniform and flies to Texas and goes
Speaker 1: to the funeral and goes up to the guy who
Speaker 1: just who was one guy there who lost six children,
Speaker 1: goes up and gives the guy a hug, right, just
Speaker 1: like And.
Speaker 2: So you were blown away by the empathy, the humanity,
Speaker 2: and by the fact that he.
Speaker 1: Didn't sure, he was not afraid to say I fucked up, right,
Speaker 1: And he said, at the end of the day, they
Speaker 1: were way better. They were way better off for doing that.
Speaker 1: Said when they went to for Congress, everyone was expecting
Speaker 1: them to deflect, deny, and delay. And when he said no, no,
Speaker 1: we screwed up as the first thing out of his mouth,
Speaker 1: He's like they were completely shocked, right, And it's like
Speaker 1: sometimes the hardest thing is not just the best.
Speaker 2: And maybe it's so refreshing because people and especially adults
Speaker 2: in corporate American in their day to day life, hear it.
Speaker 2: Never hear that from those who are in power, from
Speaker 2: their manager all the way up to the sitting politician.
Speaker 1: Or beer do Why is it? I listened to that
Speaker 1: story and I was like, how can you listen to
Speaker 1: this story and still believe it's a good idea too?
Speaker 2: I mean, this is such an inspiring thing that you're describing.
Speaker 2: Just so our listeners are aware, Can you describe what
Speaker 2: you talked about in Revenge of the Tipping Point and
Speaker 2: in your ted talk in regards to the broken windows
Speaker 2: theory that you had in two thousand book.
Speaker 1: In my twenty book twenty five years ago I made
Speaker 1: I was trying to describe why crime fell in New
Speaker 1: York City madically in the nineteen nineties, and I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time arguing that it was the result
Speaker 1: of what was called broken windows policing, which was this
Speaker 1: idea that relatively trivial signs of disorder are sent a
Speaker 1: signal to would be criminals that behavior, misbehavior is possible.
Speaker 1: More than that almost welcomed, right, no one's in charge.
Speaker 1: That idea was then taken by the NAYPD, and that
Speaker 1: was the basis for the stopp and frisk program, where
Speaker 1: the NAPD went out and over the course of many
Speaker 1: years stopped hundreds of thousands of young black men on
Speaker 1: a street looking for weapons. Because that was broken windows policing.
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, if we crack down on gun carrying,
Speaker 1: we'll send a message that people will I At the time,
Speaker 1: like many people in New York thought that stop and
Speaker 1: frisk was a really good idea. It's like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good extension of this idea. That's the way we
Speaker 1: keep the crime rate down. A court stepped in and
Speaker 1: threw out as unconstitutional stop and frisk policing, and YPD
Speaker 1: went from stopping hundreds of millions of young black men
Speaker 1: every year to almost none. And what happened, crime continued
Speaker 1: to fall. So if you wrote it if you endorse
Speaker 1: stop and frisk, and then you were suddenly faced with
Speaker 1: the empirical reality that once stop and frisk went away,
Speaker 1: things did not get worse, but rather better. You have
Speaker 1: to re examine your position, right, got it? Wait, didn't
Speaker 1: work the way I thought it was going to work.
Speaker 1: In my heart when I read that court case that
Speaker 1: throughout stopping frisk, I'm forgetten. When it was two thousand
Speaker 1: and something, Like many New Yorkers, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is the end. It's all coming back.
Speaker 3: Oh you thought New York would turn into Gotham City.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I thought the crime was coming back.
Speaker 1: And so did. I mean, if you read editorials in
Speaker 1: all the papers in New York and early aughts when
Speaker 1: that court decision went down, everybody was like glooming and dooming,
Speaker 1: We're bringing back the battle days. Didn't happen. The reverse happened.
Speaker 1: Crime accelerate, the crime drop accelerated. So I just gave
Speaker 1: a ted talk when my book came out, my last book,
Speaker 1: Criben's a tipping point where I talk about this, where
Speaker 1: I just said I was wrong, you know, and I
Speaker 1: have to take ownership of this. And here's the thing
Speaker 1: that I have come to understand about that explanation I
Speaker 1: gave of why crime fell in New York I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book that was read by a ton
Speaker 1: of people, millions of people in two thousand, arguing that
Speaker 1: the way to explain New York City's crime drop was
Speaker 1: essentially some version of aggressive policing.
Speaker 2: How did you feel when you found out that, oh,
Speaker 2: the NYPD used your book as literary or intellectual justification
Speaker 2: to stop in frisk.
Speaker 1: I mean there were many I wasn't the sole source
Speaker 1: of there, but it was a biography, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: my book became part of this kind of zeitgeisty discussion,
Speaker 1: discussion about how aggressive policing was the way to cure crime.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I think back to that time, I
Speaker 1: think I was flattered. How could you not be, because
Speaker 1: we were in the middle of this extraordinary urban experiment
Speaker 1: where Neil goes from being one of the most dangerous
Speaker 1: big cities in the world to one of the safest.
Speaker 1: And the idea that I was part of a movement
Speaker 1: that kind of helped justify this crackdown on crime was
Speaker 1: like made me feel good. And then find out oops, at.
Speaker 2: The end of the Ted talk, a woman comes on
Speaker 2: stage and thanks you for your mea Kalpa, And then
Speaker 2: you guys get into an interesting discussion about the way
Speaker 2: your work was interpreted for Did you.
Speaker 3: Ever think about what if they got it wrong?
Speaker 1: What if it was wrong and innocent people were going
Speaker 1: to have to experience this?
Speaker 3: What were your thoughts about that back then?
Speaker 1: Well, I wasn't thinking about that.
Speaker 3: After that experien operience.
Speaker 2: How do you now see your work in the way
Speaker 2: it's received by others? Do you want to put addendums
Speaker 2: that hey, this could change or has it fundamentally how
Speaker 2: has it changed the way you approach your work?
Speaker 1: Well, the over the course of my career, I think
Speaker 1: one of the changes that I've made is I have
Speaker 1: slowly come to the understanding that if you are going
Speaker 1: to play this game with ideas, you have to not
Speaker 1: temper your enthusiasm, but temper your certainty. You have to
Speaker 1: make it clear that this is what we're talking about
Speaker 1: right now, and that ideas, by their very nature are
Speaker 1: based on evidence, and evidence changes, we learn more things.
Speaker 1: Criminology is a great example. Criminology last twenty five years,
Speaker 1: the feel of criminology has, I mean, so much has happened,
Speaker 1: We know so much more. I mean, we were in
Speaker 1: retrospect primitives in two thousand. We know like that one
Speaker 1: hundred years of advances and understanding have happened in the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years. So we need to be remind
Speaker 1: people this is a knowledge is a moving target, and
Speaker 1: I think I need to do I've realized I need
Speaker 1: to do a better job of communicating that just because
Speaker 1: I'm saying this now doesn't mean it's going to be
Speaker 1: I'm going to be saying the same thing a generation
Speaker 1: now or five, or even next year.
Speaker 2: By the way, by the way, hey, I've been caught
Speaker 2: in comedy crime before as well. Yeah, as a drifting charlatan.
Speaker 2: And I think the adjustment that I've made is you
Speaker 2: have to lead with.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's what I make it very clear on our little
Speaker 2: microphones here, just in case if anyone is using micro
Speaker 2: content as a way or vessel to truth, I just
Speaker 2: want to make it very clear that the title of
Speaker 2: the show is awesome MANAJ doesn't know.
Speaker 1: Don't get me started on what happened to you, which
Speaker 1: I'm still angry about.
Speaker 3: No, don't.
Speaker 1: Nothing is more tiresome than people who fact check stories.
Speaker 1: These are not like you weren't writing a history of
Speaker 1: your life that was going to be published by Harvard
Speaker 1: University Press.
Speaker 3: I was condensing many stories into seventy minutes.
Speaker 1: That's you're a performer, forgetness sake, do we forget what
Speaker 1: a performer is like. Part of what's funny about comedians,
Speaker 1: like the universe of good comedians, is that when we
Speaker 1: are listening to you, the thing that's that draws us
Speaker 1: to you is is the idea that you guys have
Speaker 1: a distorted lens like It's that's what we don't have.
Speaker 1: We don't have a distorted lens. We don't see the
Speaker 1: comic possibilities in looking at the world from a slightly
Speaker 1: different angle. And the delight we get from listening is, Oh,
Speaker 1: that person's not looking at something straight on. They have
Speaker 1: this completely you know this surprising wacko. Never would have
Speaker 1: thought about it in a million years perspective. That's the punchline.
Speaker 1: That's what a punchline is, sure right. So like to
Speaker 1: sit to fact check a story like that is to
Speaker 1: essentially undermine the very basis of what we want in
Speaker 1: a comedian. And if you're getting your history from a
Speaker 1: from a from a comics routine, then you're so intellectually impoverished.
Speaker 1: I have no time for you.
Speaker 2: Welcome, don't do this already put out I put out
Speaker 2: a twenty three minute YouTube video about this.
Speaker 3: You can see it in the way below. But it's fine.
Speaker 1: It drives me crazy.
Speaker 2: So Malcolm, it's okay. I'm a race baiting Britain Charlatan.
Speaker 2: It's okay.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, you can you can.
Speaker 2: And then you can make funny You can make funny
Speaker 2: jokes about it, and then you can sell out.
Speaker 1: Any other people for who this stuff does matter get
Speaker 1: a pass, okay, Right, the politicians who are telling bullshit stories,
Speaker 1: they're not comedians, right. I didn't vote for you to
Speaker 1: look at the world from a forty five degree angles.
Speaker 3: Okay, Malcolm, you can put in comedy jail.
Speaker 1: It's fine. I guess that my sentence about this. I
Speaker 1: do not want my comics to be like dryly relating
Speaker 1: the facts of the day.
Speaker 3: Okay, understood.
Speaker 2: You want your comics spicy, You want your comics line
Speaker 2: to you, and that's okay. You know I got to
Speaker 2: give it to you, though, But again, you and I
Speaker 2: we love a hot take literally in your in you
Speaker 2: know you have revenge of the tipping point and then
Speaker 2: CBS Sunday Morning does a story on you.
Speaker 3: And you've got even more spicy takes. Let's take a look.
Speaker 1: You should never go to the best institution you get into.
Speaker 1: If you want to get a science and math degree,
Speaker 1: don't go to Harvard.
Speaker 3: This is nuts.
Speaker 1: Well, no, that's part of a complicated argument from my
Speaker 1: book David and Glythe which just says you should never
Speaker 1: if you're interested in succeeding in an educational institution, you
Speaker 1: never want to be in the bottom half of your class.
Speaker 1: It's too hard, So you should go to Harvard. If
Speaker 1: you think you can be in the top quarter of
Speaker 1: your class at Harvard, that's fine, but don't go there.
Speaker 1: If you're going to be the bottom of a class,
Speaker 1: no doing stem. You're just going to drop out. You
Speaker 1: just get it. Now.
Speaker 2: You're triggering me because I was pre mad and I
Speaker 2: was in the bottom third of my class. They did
Speaker 2: the whole thing. Look to your right, look to your left.
Speaker 2: Two of you won't make it.
Speaker 1: You were one of those, was one of the two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we don't have to get into this because
Speaker 2: you're triggering me. But let me just say, Malcolm, if
Speaker 2: you do get into Harvard, you gotta go to Harvard.
Speaker 3: You have to.
Speaker 1: You know, if my daughters knock on Wood get into
Speaker 1: Harvard and I don't think they're going to be in
Speaker 1: the top third of their class, I'm gonna say, don't go.
Speaker 1: It's too hard. It's crazy hard. Do you know how
Speaker 1: smart those kids are? I know people who went to
Speaker 1: like elite public high schools, like you know Stuyvesant in
Speaker 1: New York. Yeah, and everyone in Stuvesant basically has an
Speaker 1: IQ one hundred and eighty. So the dumbest person in
Speaker 1: a math class in Stuyvesant can have an IQ of
Speaker 1: one hundred and whatever seventy. So they think they're dumb
Speaker 1: because you measure your that's how you measure your intelligence
Speaker 1: by looking around the room. They're not dumb. They're in
Speaker 1: the top ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of humanity.
Speaker 1: But they are misled by the fact that they happen
Speaker 1: to be in the most extraordinarily selective group of individuals
Speaker 1: in the city of New York. Don't do that to yourself, or.
Speaker 2: You should, because I'll tell you why both Ted Cruise.
Speaker 2: Ted Cruse went to Harvard and then Donald Trump went
Speaker 2: to Penn. So my point is is that there are
Speaker 2: idiots that go to these institutions and if they can
Speaker 2: spin it into a win, so can you. If you
Speaker 2: get into Harvard, go take your shot of going to
Speaker 2: the league, if you get drafted, if David Starting gives
Speaker 2: you the call. I went to UC Davis, unfortunately. And
Speaker 2: the crazy part is I got into UCLA, but I
Speaker 2: didn't go I went to Davis instead.
Speaker 3: This is a longer story for another time. I got scared.
Speaker 1: Your family's from Sacramento.
Speaker 3: With it, Sacramento Davis. I grew up in Davis and
Speaker 3: I went to UC Davis.
Speaker 1: You got you do want to go to you?
Speaker 2: I met I met my wife there and so so
Speaker 2: it was the biggest bles all and it was wonderful.
Speaker 1: But you see Subercamp, It's.
Speaker 3: Like, Malcolm, I get it.
Speaker 1: What were you doing?
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I got I got shook, I
Speaker 3: got shund That is madness that I didn't go to UCLA. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, I know. It is a regret.
Speaker 1: Were you like an agg major? Like what were you is?
Speaker 3: This is a pre major?
Speaker 2: And I ran into somebody when I did my campus
Speaker 2: visit that said, hey, stem at UCLA is really hard.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't go here.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, so you're thinking, and.
Speaker 2: That's what got me to not go. Now, look again,
Speaker 2: I met the love of my life, the mother of
Speaker 2: my children.
Speaker 3: At UC Davis. Let's take that reality to the side.
Speaker 2: Everything else. UCLA the wooden center of the history Kareem
Speaker 2: abdul Jabbar.
Speaker 3: And you're in the middle of last would I should
Speaker 3: have gone?
Speaker 2: And so, Malcolm, if you get a call from Adam
Speaker 2: Silver that says we're calling you up to be one
Speaker 2: of the four hundred players to play in the league,
Speaker 2: you got to go to the league. And if you
Speaker 2: can't cut it, fine, but you got to go to
Speaker 2: the l Let's look at another one of your crazy,
Speaker 2: spicy takes that I don't know how you thought this
Speaker 2: was cool.
Speaker 3: Let's take a look.
Speaker 1: It's not in your best interest to work at home.
Speaker 1: I know it's a hassle come to the office. But
Speaker 1: like you know, if you work, if you're just sitting
Speaker 1: in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work
Speaker 1: life you want to live?
Speaker 3: Is that the work life I want? Answer?
Speaker 1: Yes, so much trouble for that. I'll never leave that
Speaker 1: one down. I can't believe you dredge that one up.
Speaker 3: It's one of the top videos of you, Malcolm, What
Speaker 3: am I wearing? You're wearing like a great tea shirt.
Speaker 2: So the irony here is that you're telling people to
Speaker 2: not be bums being their pajamas and work at home,
Speaker 2: and you're wearing a goddamn Haines tea Here.
Speaker 1: Here's what I should have said. I should have said
Speaker 1: two things, No, one thing. It depends who you are.
Speaker 1: If you're twenty five and you're trying to entering a
Speaker 1: new field and trying to master it, you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: at home. You got to go to the office because
Speaker 1: you got to learn from other people. And it's way, way, way,
Speaker 1: way easier to learn from other people when you can
Speaker 1: see them face to face. If you're fifty and you
Speaker 1: got three kids at home, and you've got an hour
Speaker 1: and a half commute, and you're really good at your
Speaker 1: job and experienced, why are you coming in that makes
Speaker 1: any sense? You can be way more productive at home.
Speaker 1: Depends who you are. What I was reacting to, I
Speaker 1: think in that was this widespread belief that every is
Speaker 1: better off just working from home. I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1: I do think if I had worked from home in
Speaker 1: my twenties, I would not be here. You would never
Speaker 1: have heard of Malcolm Level.
Speaker 2: Here's my subway take. I'm kareem now I have one
Speaker 2: hundred percent disagree. I'm not here to tell anybody how
Speaker 2: they should live their life. I used to work at
Speaker 2: Office Max for many years. I'm not trying to brag,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't a great employee, and I truly did
Speaker 2: not care because my first name isn't Office and my
Speaker 2: last name isn't Max. Whatever you can to do, you
Speaker 2: protect your own, get the bag and take care of
Speaker 2: your family, do your thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that yours is a bunch more evolved position
Speaker 1: than mine, but I do. I was simply trying to
Speaker 1: explain if you've never if you're young and you're trying to,
Speaker 1: like I said, master something complicated, it can be hard
Speaker 1: to understand how much richer the learning experience is when
Speaker 1: it's in a social setting, right, that's all, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to be a journalist. So when I started out
Speaker 1: in journal I got a job at the age of
Speaker 1: twenty three at the Washington Post, and I was within
Speaker 1: ten feet of four or five of the greatest journalists
Speaker 1: of my generation. And I didn't know any about journalism.
Speaker 3: And I whorr you around? I mean, man, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, among others, Bob Woodward was greatest investigative reporter of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Was as far away from me as
Speaker 1: you aren't. There was just a serious a guy named
Speaker 1: Steve call who was like a legend. There was a
Speaker 1: guy next to me called Mike Kisikoff who was another legend.
Speaker 1: And I spent like six months, my first six months,
Speaker 1: almost doing nothing but sitting there and just eavesdropping and
Speaker 1: like it was a masterclass all these things that I
Speaker 1: didn't know. Idea, how to ask a question, how to
Speaker 1: get how to interview someone who didn't want to be interviewed,
Speaker 1: how to frame idea, how to extreme I could go
Speaker 1: on and on and on, how to process things on
Speaker 1: the fly, how to write. I just watched them.
Speaker 3: You picked up a ton of game from these people
Speaker 3: in person.
Speaker 1: And No, by the way, no athlete would ever say
Speaker 1: you can master a sport by yourself. Every would They
Speaker 1: would never say, oh, I got drafted by the Nickson.
Speaker 1: Here's what I'm going to do to work from home
Speaker 1: over the off season. No, they would never say that. Like, no,
Speaker 1: if Lebron wants to spend the off season by himself. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: he's the top of this game. But if you're a rookie,
Speaker 1: if you're nineteen and you just got drafted out of wherever,
Speaker 1: Kansas State, No, you show up with your peers and
Speaker 1: learn from them. That's what That's all I was saying.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a I do not think that
Speaker 1: it's a controversial take. And I was speaking from my
Speaker 1: own personal experience because I had become aware, acutely aware,
Speaker 1: in later life just how much I learned in those
Speaker 1: early years in journalists.
Speaker 2: You know, Malcolm, you were able to pick up game
Speaker 2: from some legends at some great institutions.
Speaker 3: But a lot of people who have jobs.
Speaker 2: Their coworkers are a bunch of bums, and so they
Speaker 2: just want to say, peace out, Carl, Yeah, I'm going home.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're more of a cynic than me
Speaker 1: on this. I actually think that if you're if you
Speaker 1: are motivated, you can always find in any setting somebody
Speaker 1: from whom you can learn. And that's part of That's
Speaker 1: another thing that is useful about going in your early years,
Speaker 1: in going to the immersing yourself is making those kinds
Speaker 1: of social calls, right, there's ten people around here, who's
Speaker 1: the one that matters and that I should be attaching
Speaker 1: myself and learning from. That's a really, really important skill
Speaker 1: that you can't learn by yourself.
Speaker 2: We've had an amazing conversation, but we haven't even gotten
Speaker 2: to I think one of your best pieces of work.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the podcast revision Is History. Yeah, Season eleven,
Speaker 2: Ladies and Gentlemen. Season eleven of Revisionist History is about
Speaker 2: the Alabama murders. Now that's the title of it, But
Speaker 2: give give me the details of what launched this story
Speaker 2: about this particular situation in Alabama.
Speaker 1: A friend of myn named Stephen I was talking to
Speaker 1: about a year and a half ago when he goes,
Speaker 1: I have a friend named Kate who has the most
Speaker 1: interesting job in America. You should talk to her. I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, And I did this thing which I've
Speaker 1: started to do more and more and more, where I
Speaker 1: find someone interesting and I just sit down with them
Speaker 1: for as many hours as they can tolerate and just
Speaker 1: talk to them with no agenda. So Kate was someone.
Speaker 1: Kate Porterfield was this really extraordinary woman whose job it
Speaker 1: was She's a trauma expert, and she started out by
Speaker 1: treating people who've been started working at the Torture Clinic
Speaker 1: of Bellevue, treating people who've been tortured around the world.
Speaker 1: I'm this world renowned torture clinic there. Then she went
Speaker 1: on and she spent a lot of time on Goodtnama
Speaker 1: Bay working with people who've been tortured by the CIA.
Speaker 1: And then she got involved in criminal cases, capital cases
Speaker 1: where she was brought in by usually by the defense
Speaker 1: in a death penalty case to try and understand the
Speaker 1: life and the trauma of the convicted killer. Right and
Speaker 1: so incredibly interesting. So I sat down with her. We
Speaker 1: met five times, each time for about three hours, and
Speaker 1: in the fourth time, fourth visit, fourth session, she started
Speaker 1: talking about a case she had just finished working on
Speaker 1: by a guy named Kenny Smith, and I was just floored.
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, my god, that's what I want.
Speaker 1: So in our like twenty I was like, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Kenny Smith was a guy from Florence, Alabama, in the
Speaker 1: north western corner of the state, who had been convicted
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight of murdering the wife of a preacher,
Speaker 1: and it was a murder for hire. And I'd been
Speaker 1: sentenced to to death by in a state of Alabama,
Speaker 1: and I'd been living on death row for forty eight years.
Speaker 1: And she got involved in that case as just as
Speaker 1: Kenny was about to be executed, and so I just said, oh,
Speaker 1: I wonder to tell that story. And it is the
Speaker 1: most I think it's the best thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1: It was the most emotionally powerful thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1: We ended up doing seven episodes, We ended up expanding it,
Speaker 1: so Kate, who plays a central role in the story,
Speaker 1: doesn't even appear until episode five or six.
Speaker 3: Isn't it.
Speaker 2: It was two men that were two men, Yeah, another
Speaker 2: guys as well. So the whole premise of this thing
Speaker 2: is so interesting. It almost sounds like a prestige show
Speaker 2: for FX, which is there's a wife, there's a husband,
Speaker 2: there's a murder for hire. The men assault and beats
Speaker 2: said wife, but then the husband kills the wife.
Speaker 3: We think, we think yeah, And then.
Speaker 2: It's specifically about the two men that were part of
Speaker 2: this murder for hire that are then given the death sentence.
Speaker 2: And what's really fascinating about it is you think this
Speaker 2: is almost like true crime, but it's actually an analysis
Speaker 2: about how crazy Alabama judges are.
Speaker 3: Why are they so crazy?
Speaker 1: Well, why is Alabama crazy? I mean, Alabama is the
Speaker 1: weirdest stay in the Union.
Speaker 3: I think that's.
Speaker 1: Beyond dispute, also one of the most fascinating. I mean
Speaker 1: I say that I actually love Alabama. I go there.
Speaker 1: I've done so many stories there. I go there all
Speaker 1: the time. I find it absolutely riveting place. The great
Speaker 1: curse of the United States is of course, to the
Speaker 1: legacy of slavery, which has persisted. That curse has lingered
Speaker 1: longer in some parts of the country than others, and
Speaker 1: Alabama is a place that is still kind of struggling
Speaker 1: under the weight of that legacy. Now, this case involves
Speaker 1: everyone's white and in this case, so it's not explicitly
Speaker 1: about the relationship being black and white people. But what
Speaker 1: we're describing is a brutal and unfeeling system of punishment
Speaker 1: that arises in response to the kind of racial realities
Speaker 1: of the state. So we have this what we're documenting
Speaker 1: in this series is the unrelenting, tireless, relentless desire on
Speaker 1: the part of the state of Alabama to find a
Speaker 1: way to murder these two guys, to execute these two
Speaker 1: convicted murderers.
Speaker 2: What's so interesting about it is this is an analysis
Speaker 2: on capital punishment. So the jury is actually against the
Speaker 2: death sentence, the judge is for it. But just for
Speaker 2: our audience before they dive into the season, can you
Speaker 2: give me the history of capital punishment in America? What's
Speaker 2: the history of capital punishment in the United States.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it's compared to our Western European peers, America
Speaker 1: was very slow to kind of dial back capital punishment.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty big deal in this country up through
Speaker 1: the seventies. And then the Supreme Court says, We've looked
Speaker 1: at the way capital punishment is being used in the
Speaker 1: States and we think it clearly shows signs of racial
Speaker 1: bias and arbitrary in US. You know, you get two
Speaker 1: people convicted of the same crime, one's getting executed one tonight.
Speaker 1: You can't do that. You got to have some kind
Speaker 1: of rigor. They put a pause on it on death pedally.
Speaker 1: Public support for the death penalty plummets and people think
Speaker 1: it's going away, and then it comes roaring back, not everywhere,
Speaker 1: but particularly in the South. And one of the states
Speaker 1: in which it comes running back is Alabama. And Alabama
Speaker 1: does this thing to ensure that they will to retain
Speaker 1: their right to execute whoever they choose. They give the
Speaker 1: judges what are called what is called override. So the
Speaker 1: only one of the state in the Union that does
Speaker 1: any remotely like this. But in the state of Alabama,
Speaker 1: if you are convicted of a crime and the jury
Speaker 1: votes for life without parole and not the death penalty,
Speaker 1: if the judge wants it's not been change but for
Speaker 1: many years, if the judge wanted to, the judge could
Speaker 1: override the jury and just say, I know you wanted
Speaker 1: life without parole, but I think this person should be killed.
Speaker 1: And which is like a really really weird thing where
Speaker 1: they basically throw out.
Speaker 2: A judge basically gets to have a super veto on
Speaker 2: a jury, which is nuts nuts. But have two questions
Speaker 2: follow up questions. The first is is that up until
Speaker 2: the seventies they were like, no, we cannot kill people,
Speaker 2: we are against the death penalty. What was it about
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court that lifted that band?
Speaker 1: So everyone's doing it. The Supreme Court says stop, and
Speaker 1: then the sweep got comes back a couple of years
Speaker 1: later and says, you can proceed so long as you
Speaker 1: ensure they're speaking to the states that there's some rigord
Speaker 1: of the process. You gonna have standards you have to say,
Speaker 1: you know what.
Speaker 3: Other standards here.
Speaker 2: They're like, look, you can't the guillotines gotta go, we
Speaker 2: can't have a firing squad. Some states, by the way,
Speaker 2: have the firing squad.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, there's a big week. I didn't get into it,
Speaker 1: but I interviewed all these people about you know, one
Speaker 1: of the standards is the method of punishment must be
Speaker 1: neither cruel nor unusual. And so you get into these
Speaker 1: big definitional things. Is is lethal injection, for example, cruel
Speaker 1: And there's a big argument that it is because you suffer.
Speaker 1: Actually you think you're not suffering lethal injection, you are,
Speaker 1: Then the electric chair was clearly cruel. You did suffer.
Speaker 1: So there's a big argument. One of the reasons that
Speaker 1: UTAH brings back the firing squad is that as an
Speaker 1: argument that it's more humane than lethal injection. Actually, if
Speaker 1: I had to be executed, I would choose the firing
Speaker 1: squad over lethal injection.
Speaker 3: It's that bad lethal injection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about that in one of the episodes.
Speaker 3: So take me through the mechanics of lethal injection. How
Speaker 3: does it work?
Speaker 1: It's three drugs. It was dreamt up by this doctor
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma in the seventies on the back of an envelope.
Speaker 1: It's never been subjected to any kind of scientific protocol
Speaker 1: or medical analysis. Is the random dude in response to
Speaker 1: a request from the Oklahoma state legislature which wanted to
Speaker 1: start putting prisoners down the same way they put down horses.
Speaker 1: And so the guy says, Okay, here's what you should do.
Speaker 1: Give them a sedative like a barbituate, then hit them
Speaker 1: with a paralytic that basically kind of freezes you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then hit them with potassium chloride, which will stop
Speaker 1: their heart. I think basically this position is that should work.
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, let's do that.
Speaker 3: And Reagan, funny enough, was a big proponent of.
Speaker 1: Reg's proponent of it, and so lethal injection which spreads
Speaker 1: throughout America and then throughout the world. So you know
Speaker 1: in many countries now that have euthanasia legalized euthanasia, they're
Speaker 1: using the lethal injection protocol. Well, we have a whole
Speaker 1: episode of the podcast where this really brilliant anaesesiologist from
Speaker 1: Orlando named Joel Zivitt Barry does all these autopsies of
Speaker 1: people who have been executed. He finds that their lungs
Speaker 1: are filled with blood, frothy blood, and realizes what's happening
Speaker 1: is that the barbituate that they get at the very
Speaker 1: beginning is given in such a high dose that it's
Speaker 1: turned their blood as acidic and it's burning up their lungs.
Speaker 1: So what happens is your lungs are on fire, which is,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, quite painful because you've been giving
Speaker 1: a paralytic you can't cry out in pain.
Speaker 2: I mean, the way you describe it in the podcast
Speaker 2: is horrifying. This is the poll quote. The last thing
Speaker 2: that you may know is that you're on fire from
Speaker 2: the inside and the blood is filling up your lungs
Speaker 2: as you die.
Speaker 1: It's nasty. The whole point of this is no one
Speaker 1: who's involved in the death penalty game is even remotely
Speaker 1: interested in trying to prove that this is a quote
Speaker 1: unquote humane method of They don't you when Joel Zivitt
Speaker 1: did the analysis of autopsies to figure out what was
Speaker 1: going on with lethal injection. Lethal injection have been used
Speaker 1: in American prisons for close to fifty years. So for
Speaker 1: half a century we've been doing this, and no one
Speaker 1: bothered in fifty years to ask the question of how
Speaker 1: exactly lethal injection was doing its work. That's the level
Speaker 1: of kind of moral callousness that we're talking about.
Speaker 2: It just felt like it was common knowledge when Reagan
Speaker 2: was like, look, they use it on horses, but now
Speaker 2: horses are people, so it'll be the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we go into this in some detail, and
Speaker 1: it's the most horrifying part of what is a very
Speaker 1: long and horrifying story. It's just like nobody gives a shit.
Speaker 2: Well, there's an interesting philosophical discussion to be had here
Speaker 2: with I call them the revenge heads, the petty police.
Speaker 3: There's two camps. There's one camp.
Speaker 2: That's like, there has to be a more humane way
Speaker 2: to have justice and to understand that you cannot just
Speaker 2: kill human beings. Then there are people that are like good, yeah, good.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of that.
Speaker 3: No, but for real yeah good yeah.
Speaker 1: There is that strong which I don't understand.
Speaker 3: How do you react to that sentiment?
Speaker 1: It seems peculiarly American, it seems peculiarly medieval. It's part
Speaker 1: of this weird thing about this country. Which is that
Speaker 1: we are simultaneously the most sophisticated country in the world
Speaker 1: and also the least. The larger part of it about
Speaker 1: this is that if you compare the US to say,
Speaker 1: Western Europe or parts of South Asia East Asia, that
Speaker 1: we're very interested in the severity of punishment and they're
Speaker 1: interested in the certainty of punishment. So if you think
Speaker 1: about deterrence, about the attempt to dissuade someone from committing
Speaker 1: a crime, the certainty of punishment, how likely are you
Speaker 1: to get caught, the severity of punishment, how much you'll
Speaker 1: suffer if once we catch you, and the celerity of punishment,
Speaker 1: how quickly it happens. In Europe, they are super focused
Speaker 1: on certainty. If you murder someone in Europe, it's almost
Speaker 1: one hundred percent certain you will get arrested or someone
Speaker 1: will get arrested for that. Homicide certainly super high, but
Speaker 1: they go really easy on severity. Prison sentences are fractions
Speaker 1: a long. Most people don't go to prison. We do
Speaker 1: the opposite. We have very low certainty the chances of
Speaker 1: getting arrested for homicide in this country, or less than
Speaker 1: fifty percent in parts in certain neighborhoods in this country.
Speaker 1: They're beholo on the South side of Chicago, it's like
Speaker 1: fifteen percent. But if you get caught, you will throw
Speaker 1: away the key. Right, So this is part of that
Speaker 1: same dynamic. We've decided we're going to put all of
Speaker 1: our eggs in the severity basket and make we want
Speaker 1: to make punishment as horrifying as it sounds to try
Speaker 1: and dissuade you from committing a crime. The Europeans said,
Speaker 1: that's don't put your emphasis there, put your emphasis on certainty.
Speaker 1: I happen to believe the European approach is far superior.
Speaker 2: Why do you think in America there is this obsession,
Speaker 2: particularly with the severity and the feeling of hey, look,
Speaker 2: if you kill these bad people. We're talking about criminals,
Speaker 2: we're talking about murderers. If you kill them, now you
Speaker 2: just have good people left. Yeah, that was kind of
Speaker 2: the conversation I had I had with different friends and
Speaker 2: people at the office before you came in, Hey, how
Speaker 2: do you feel about this? And there was again camp
Speaker 2: of people that were like, this is barbaric. All of
Speaker 2: this is barbaric. The Green Mile electric chair is barbaric. Yeah,
Speaker 2: firing squad is barbaric. Lethal injection. This is nuts, it's
Speaker 2: all crazy.
Speaker 3: I'm not with this. And then there's people that are like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it'd be like.
Speaker 1: Mind, this is a total digression. But my brother was
Speaker 1: a principle in an elementary school and he was his
Speaker 1: great struggle was ensuring the quality of his teachers, right,
Speaker 1: because it's a big difference. And he would always say,
Speaker 1: you cannot fire your way to a better school, meaning
Speaker 1: that like you think your first thought is, oh, I'll
Speaker 1: just get rid of my bad teachers and hire good ones,
Speaker 1: and he's like, doesn't worked that way. You can't you
Speaker 1: If you're just getting rid of the bad ones and
Speaker 1: quote unquote hiring good ones, you're not solving the problem
Speaker 1: that made the bad teacher bad. Right. You have to
Speaker 1: look at yourself and say, am I developing people properly?
Speaker 1: Am I supporting them properly? Am I putting them in
Speaker 1: the right place? Those are the questions you got to
Speaker 1: start with. You can't just like go in there and
Speaker 1: willingly get rid of me people. And I think there's
Speaker 1: a version of that with that's what's not happening in
Speaker 1: people who are obsessed with killing off murderers. They aren't
Speaker 1: asking the harder question which is, well, it doesn't help.
Speaker 1: You're just going to if you don't solve the underlying
Speaker 1: conditions that create this, you're just going to get another
Speaker 1: crop taken your place.
Speaker 2: You have obviously a high level of empathy and curiosity,
Speaker 2: and one of the ways that you showed that is
Speaker 2: the way you end season eleven. There's this really powerful
Speaker 2: moment where you speak to the therapist of the man
Speaker 2: who was sentenced to death, and you do something that
Speaker 2: is extremely rare in podcasting. You literally are quiet and
Speaker 2: choked up and silent for a minute.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Remember this is a medium where you have to keep yapping,
Speaker 2: but you are so emotionally moved that you cannot even speak.
Speaker 2: Why did you choose to end the podcast in this moment?
Speaker 1: Because we've been on this, I'm going to get an
Speaker 1: emotion about it all over again. That doing that show
Speaker 1: was the single most There are a very small number
Speaker 1: of events that I've been a part of in my
Speaker 1: life experiences that have shaken me emotionally. Death of my
Speaker 1: father number one by far. I'll never get over that,
Speaker 1: birth of my children in a positive sense, doing that
Speaker 1: show is like up there in the shook me, shook
Speaker 1: me and still does it was incredibly hard to write,
Speaker 1: to report to like the number of times I found
Speaker 1: myself after a conducting interview where I couldn't function for
Speaker 1: the next like, and it seemed the most honest thing
Speaker 1: to do at the end of the show to communicate
Speaker 1: the fact that this tore me apart, right like, because
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do was the whole idea was
Speaker 1: it was a show about people who looked at these
Speaker 1: two kids from this little town in northern Alabama who
Speaker 1: do something insanely stupid when they're nineteen years old and
Speaker 1: were written off by the state of Alabama and by
Speaker 1: the rest of society, and the series of people come
Speaker 1: and see in them some element of humanity, go to
Speaker 1: the trouble of investing in these kids whose society has
Speaker 1: thought were worthless and finding something of value in them
Speaker 1: and learning how to love them, right And I mean,
Speaker 1: in one case, this guy we talked about, I think
Speaker 1: episode three, this lawyer visited this guy in prison, drove
Speaker 1: two hours each way once a month for twenty years
Speaker 1: to visit this kid in prison, one of one of
Speaker 1: the murderers in prison, just to spend time with them,
Speaker 1: and that like, just throw me apart, right I just
Speaker 1: it just and I needed at the end of that
Speaker 1: of the of the show to kind of just to
Speaker 1: tell people that, like, it's okay to like, it's okay
Speaker 1: to to it, it's okay to feel it is okay
Speaker 1: to open your heart to someone whose society, to someone
Speaker 1: whose society's given up.
Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. Man, It's a
Speaker 3: very powerful moment and something to think about. And it's
Speaker 3: a very.
Speaker 2: What I thought was so amazing about It is a
Speaker 2: very real thing that there are people. These two men
Speaker 2: obviously did something wrong, but for you to explore the
Speaker 2: complexity of despite the fact that people make mistakes and
Speaker 2: do things that are horrible, we're still human beings and
Speaker 2: we're some much more than what the state was thinking,
Speaker 2: where they would literally kill people from the inside as
Speaker 2: if they were animals. Yeah, and so I just thought
Speaker 2: that was a really powerful moment, And thank you for
Speaker 2: sharing how those interviews moved you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you hope that it makes us as a society
Speaker 2: more empathetic or it makes perhaps America reflect on our
Speaker 2: own internal empathy.
Speaker 1: It's always it's always a hope with these things, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to measure the impact. But I think
Speaker 1: all you can do is, like is just join the
Speaker 1: chorus right of people who are are insisting that we
Speaker 1: be more human.
Speaker 2: I gotta somehow end on a positive note. We got
Speaker 2: a button this thing?
Speaker 3: How do we do?
Speaker 1: I don't know what I did bring us down to,
Speaker 1: not my ability to kind of like inject a down
Speaker 1: or note to any room.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: It was a rare podcast moment and I think an
Speaker 2: amazing counterweight to the never ending blabbering that we have
Speaker 2: through laugh mics.
Speaker 3: It was just a really human, beautiful moment.
Speaker 2: And so, like I said, everyone, please listen to season
Speaker 2: eleven of Revisionist History.
Speaker 3: Last thing.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if you you got your pep
Speaker 2: and your step to do this, but you are very
Speaker 2: famous for giving people blurbs on.
Speaker 3: The back of their book.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Now, first things first, what is a blurb?
Speaker 2: Because it sounds like a slur that you hear, Harry Potter,
Speaker 2: you bloody blurb?
Speaker 1: Two?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 1: Two cents? Three cents? Endorsement goes on the back of
Speaker 1: a book which says I read it, I liked it.
Speaker 1: You should read it too.
Speaker 3: Do you mind giving a blurb for this interview here
Speaker 3: you can.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're the master of blurb.
Speaker 3: I've seen your blurbs on many different books.
Speaker 1: At Hassan got me to cry. I wasn't expecting it.
Speaker 1: I expecting that to happen. Anyone who can make their
Speaker 1: guests scry deserves a shout out. I would listen to
Speaker 1: Hassan doesn't know on a regular basis from now on, how.
Speaker 3: Are you prepare to be dazzled?
Speaker 1: Prepared to be dazzled?
Speaker 2: Can you also ad a parenthesis that I didn't bully
Speaker 2: you into crying?
Speaker 3: Holy rne away only lay No.
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Speaker 3: Don't miss out