Transcript of Malcolm Gladwell #4

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Buck Rogers, and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

Hi.

Hello. Today we have, um, our friend Malcolm Gladwell.

Yes.

5-time New York Times bestselling author, journalist, podcaster. Revisionist History, our favorite podcast.

So good.

That's so good. His books: Outliers, Blink, The Tipping Point, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath, His new book, which I would argue is his most important to date, is called The American Way of Killing: An Invention of an Epidemic. He brings to light some elements of this debate we've never even heard or thought of, and they're so

fascinating. Mind-blowing, really. He said something that has changed an opinion of mine for good, which was— I don't think I should say.

Oh, yeah. There was several for me where I was like, oh, wow, that's the opposite of what I thought. thought, and I need to recalibrate. Yeah, it's so, so good. Uh, please enjoy Malcolm Gladwell. Oh, also, I've been zapping my face if you're watching this. Yeah, I don't want to pretend I haven't. Okay, enjoy.

Hi, Monica.

How you doing?

Just discovered you guys have something very essential in common.

We love the heat.

We really do.

I mean, look what she's wearing. And I could use a jacket.

I'm always cold. I could easily have another layer on right now.

Yeah, it's freezing in here.

We'd be a terrible married couple, you and I.

We come from hot environments.

I know, that's what I was gonna say. My people are, uh, you know, and your people.

Exactly. So I think it all works.

You love a hot, humid day, y'all.

I mean, humid is getting less comfortable. I don't mind humid. Bring it on.

No issues with that.

Now, do you have ideal running conditions, though? You must. Like, you're not dying at jogging humidity, are you?

I don't mind. I'm indifferent.

Now I feel like you're just being disagreeable.

This morning was perfect, I thought.

Did you run this morning?

I ran in Griffith Park, yeah.

Oh, right across the street! Yeah. Oh! Do you run up to the observatory?

No. Well, I didn't feel like it this morning. There's a towpath that goes around the perimeter by

the zoo.

There's the freeways right there. You run along the freeway for a while.

Yeah. And then on the left, eventually, is the zoo.

And around the golf course. There's a loop. Yeah, I did too.

Nice.

You're running by the zoo and you maybe just don't know it.

Oh, really?

That enormous parking lot. Did you see the Gene Autry Museum on the right? The, like, Western museum?

Another thing we have in common, we're not observant, clearly.

I'm not observant.

I just want to say right out of the gates, this is really, really, really up there for me, this book. I loved it so much. I mean, it's really kind of rivaling Tipping Point. That joy I got when I first was exposed to the way your brain works. This is really an incredible book. I can't wait for people to read it or preferably listen to it as I did. Do you have any reservation about starting a book about guns in America?

Why would I have reservations?

Because—

I love that answer.

Yeah, I can think of a bunch of reasons. It's a very polarizing topic right out of the gate.

People are scared to talk about it.

You know, if you do your job right, you're going to offend both sides, which I would argue you've done in a very satisfying Malcolm Gladwell, like you weigh. There must be some level— I don't know, maybe you do or don't wrestle with it. I have my opinions about guns. I also have this terrible understanding of 2/3 of our House would have to agree to get rid of an amendment. So part of me has this— is this a puritanic pursuit? Can anything really be accomplished? Is it worthwhile? Am I just fueling more? You know, like these things come to mind or no? You just go, I have a point of view on this and I want to Share that.

I see what you're saying. And maybe when I was younger, I might have— maybe not. It seems like censorship, self-censorship to do that. And that makes me uncomfortable. And also, I have a certain amount of confidence. I think it's fine to say controversial things. If your reader or your listener understands your intentions, if they believe you're acting in good faith, I think it's fine. I think what is upsetting to someone is the feeling they're being Played or

led

or manipulated or condescended to. But if your intentions are clear and honest, I think it's fine. I have warm feelings towards lots of people who disagree with me profoundly because I perceive their intentions to be pure.

Yes. I guess maybe a better way for me to phrase it is you have limited time and resources. I would presume your preference would be that the things you contribute change things. Is that fair?

Mm, yeah.

Maybe not.

One thing that I've been conscious of, 'cause I've written about crime and violence in almost every book I've written. It's a topic I keep coming back to, and I'm very much aware of the extent to which my own views have evolved. Every time I write about it, I learn something I didn't know. So, what was driving this book in part was, I began to uncover things I'd never thought of about crime, even though I thought I'd been thinking about crime in a sophisticated way for 30 years. But it's a bunch of stuff I was just like, wait, what? Yes. And when that happens to me, I'm like, okay, it's fine. Let's just explore this. And after— we can talk about this later, but since writing the book, I've now been doing this big project on Baltimore, because Baltimore is the American city that's seen the steepest decline in gun violence in the last couple of years. And they're doing really interesting things. And everything they're doing is new to me. It's like, it's fascinating. I'm so kind of consumed with this right now that all those other considerations I just pushed aside. And I feel like I'm on this ride to learn more about this thing.

And anyone who wants to climb on— and if you want to argue with me, fine. I'm arguing with myself half the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's start with a really important fact, which is you're from Canada. I think a lot of us inside of the bubble, it's the water we're in. It's like I've never turned on the news in my life and not heard about a shooting. It's so standard. We interviewed a woman yesterday. The prompt was, tell us about a time you were on the news. This young lady's 24. She's at a fucking—

We're not supposed to— she's at a big restaurant chain.

I mean, I don't know.

She wanted to keep it—

she wanted to, but it's in the article. Anyway, she's

at a big restaurant chain,

a friendly family chain restaurant in the middle of rural America, and she thinks she hears fireworks and she stands up to look out the window and she gets shot. And there's 20 guys in the parking lot that are firing 60 rounds off in like a neighborhood

college town.

College town. We're hearing that, we're like, yeah, that's standard. Like, you live here, you know, you might get shot at some point, or you'll know someone that gets shot. So just, it starts with perhaps how aware of our gun madness were you in Canada?

As a kid, Time magazine would come every week. We had no TV. We read books and we got Time magazine. We didn't even get a newspaper. That's my childhood. Go to the library with my mom once a week, come back with a big armful of books, and then Time magazine would arrive and I would read Time magazine from beginning to end, the whole thing.

That had to be a very exciting publication versus the books. It was glossy pictures and stuff.

Got pictures.

This is like the Marvel movie coming out.

To this day, there are pictures that were in Time that if I see them, like in some archive, I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that. Like, it's just burned in my memory. So I'm whatever I am, 8 years old in rural Ontario. And in the mail every week comes this little thing about this country that I've never visited, which is only 100 miles away. And which I'm completely fascinated by. As I got a little older, I did nothing— I read enormous amounts of books on America, American politics. I mean, I was obsessed with America. And I couldn't get over this fact. I'd read Time Magazine, invariably it's all these articles about people getting shot, people getting murdered, crime this, crime that. And I had no experience with crime. None. My town had one police officer, and we knew him. He was the husband of my mom's friend. Wow. And he would, like, stop you and tell you, I'll tell your parents.

Like Mayberry police.

That's the funnest.

I'd never seen a gun. I'd never heard of anyone getting shot. Nobody ever broke into our house. It's like, remember once my mom had a— this is a parallel thing, but my mom is the kind of person who people come and they just sit and talk to my mom. It's still happening now at 95 in her nursing home. If I called her, she was like, well, I have people coming over. Can you call later?

I have a line building. I gotta wrap this up.

I remember once she had a friend from Jamaica who came, who was living in Atlanta. And I was eavesdropping on the conversation. And I just remember her friend, a fellow Jamaican, just talking about the experience. This is the '70s, living in presumably a poor neighborhood in Atlanta in the '70s. Are you from Atlanta, Monica? Yep. And I just remember thinking, oh my God, she's talking about the racism and the violence, and with tones of kind of horror. She came from Jamaica where racism wouldn't be an issue. And there is violence in Jamaica, but not of the kind she was describing.

Did it sound scary here?

It sounded foreign, and it sounded mysterious.

Just so different.

And I was beyond fascinated. And the minute I got my driver's license, my friend Terry and I, we drove to America. We— one summer we got in his mom's car, and we took a 4-day road trip.

Were you like, that place is crazy, or were you just anthropologically just interested?

I don't know if I got that far. The community I grew up in was a Mennonite community in Southwest Ontario. So everyone was a pacifist. And so we were on the extreme other end of the continuum. So hearing about America, I was like, oh my God. Because in many ways it's so similar, right? It looks the same. Same TV, same food, same God, same everything. Yeah,

that's what I like about the book. You're like, we're eating at the same restaurants, we're wearing the exact same clothes, we're watching the same exact TV shows. And yet this country has 3x the amount of homicides that Canada does, and we have 4 times the amount of homicides that the UK has. Again, I don't think we're so aware of it inside of it, right?

Yeah. Like, you have a great episode on Paw Patrol that is saying kind of the same thing, that Canada just has a little bit of a different way of being. And you can't really tell when you're here in America until you start picking apart these teeny tiny differences. But they mean everything. They mean everything about the structure of how we live.

And I got to say, just even reading that in the book, like, we watch the same shows, we eat the same food. Y'all are immigrants too, because I push back a little bit sometimes when America gets criticized. Let's just take the pandemic, right? It's like, we did not cooperate. You know, if you charted us against the rest of the countries in the world, we did not cooperate. But additionally, we also came up with 4 of the 5 vaccines and manufactured them and got them all out. And so my argument's always like, yeah, man, you You don't get it all. You don't get cooperation and then these streaks of, you know, like you got to take it all. We're a very high dopamine country with a bunch of immigrants that had high dopamine where they lived and came here, right? And you can trace that across the West and the even higher dopamine people went to the West. But that breaks down when I think of Canada because you too are the products of people with high dopamine who came from somewhere else. And then I go, huh, well, that is curious. Why aren't you as crazy as we are?

There's a difference. I should say, this book is not an I hate America book.

Oh, no, not at all. I'm not painting it that way.

I have chosen to live in this country. I love it. For how many years now? 30 years?

Okay, so the first fun test in the book is we take 5 cities: Chicago, New York, Toronto, Paris, and London. And so, Monica, if you had to rank those 5 cities— Oh, God.

Okay.

Highest to lowest homicides between Chicago, New York, Toronto, Paris, and London, what would you guess the order is?

Chicago. Paris. Oh,

wow.

New York, London, Toronto.

You're a little bit out of order. New York's higher than Paris.

Oh, it is? I thought that was so obvious. I was trying to—

You're trying to be smart?

I'm always trying to be too smart.

Well, there's a second part to this, which is really fun. I would argue, and the book argues, it's a pretty obvious list. At least most people are gonna definitely say Chicago, New York, and they know the American cities are gonna be the highest. And then you're going to probably assume Paris is a little dicier than, say, London. I don't know. Now rank those 5 cities for robberies.

Oh, okay. Paris.

Yep.

Oh, damn it. Right out of the gate.

There's more petty crime, I think, in Europe. Maybe London next, maybe even. Toronto, maybe? New York, Chicago?

I have to say, Monica's in a class by herself. I

feel like she secretly read the book. She's not supposed to. She's supposed to be the audience. I

didn't. I've been wanting to so badly because he keeps talking about it. And I'm like, I am not allowed until he comes. But no, I didn't.

No, you're right. So this is a super interesting distinction. There's all kinds of misperceptions I'm trying to correct in the book. We start with this one. Crime and violence are 2 completely separate things. They involve different people. They have different roots, different causes, different cures. America is not a high-crime society. So by crime, I mean robbery, car theft. Yes. Your house broken into, what have you. In fact, your car— I was talking to someone who was going to Montreal recently. Your car is far more likely to be stolen or broken into in Montreal than New York City. Not even close. You're much more likely to have your home broken into in Paris or London than you are in Chicago. America, by the standards of the Western world, is a medium to low crime place. What's different about America is violence. That's what's distinctive. It seems like a pedantic point, but when politicians go around and say they're going to get tough on crime, you have to stop them and say, wait a second, what do you mean?

Yeah.

Because if you want to get tough on crime as it's understood by criminologists, you don't need to. We're fine. The particular American problem is violence.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's what we over-index in preposterously, right? So I like— you immediately in this book introduce kind of a framing, which I like, which is there are many specific issues within this broad debate about gun violence. And the framing you introduce is it gives them all this unifying theme, which is the concept of a dishonest conversation. So what is a dishonest conversation? And what different forms can they take?

So there's one sense of dishonesty, which is people are just lying,

right?

I don't think we're lying. I mean, in a broader sense, I feel like conversations are dishonest when we pretend something's important when it's not, or vice versa. Or when we know what the right answer is, what the appropriate response is, But we just can't bring ourselves to do it.

Or we ignore some very obvious truth.

Or we ignore some very— like, what I'm getting at with dishonesty is, it's when the conversation is filled with cowardice and with laziness. When we know there's an answer out there, but we just can't be bothered to try and find it. I find that is a common element in a lot of the way that Americans talk about violence. There's that kind of dishonesty. We're not engaging with the problem, and we're not trying to understand the problem. So that distinction between crime and violence will be a small example of this larger thing. Like, wait, be specific here. You don't mean what you're saying.

We meet immediately this young medical professional from Chicago, a Black guy.

Abdullah Brad. Brad.

Who personally, you ask him if he could count the number of folks he knows that have been shot.

I still think about it, and it nearly brings me to tears. He's an ER doc at the University of Chicago Hospital. Young guy. in his 30s, grew up in the South Side of Chicago, decides to stay there to practice medicine. Could have gone anywhere. So he's practicing medicine in the neighborhood he grew up. And I ask him, so how many people do you know from growing up who've been killed? And he says, you mean that are in my phone? Oh my God. Meaning there's a universe of guys I know, like, that's in the 30s.

From the neighborhood.

From the neighborhood. He said, but people that I knew well enough that I would be texting with him on a regular basis. And he says, 15. This is a guy who's probably 35 years old. Yeah. So he has been, over the course of his adult life, including his own brother, 15 funerals.

Every other year, someone he knows in his lifetime is murdered.

I had been to, like, one funeral, 2 funerals of young people, children of friends of mine. And it was the most devastating thing.

Of course.

This guy's done it 15 times, and these are personal friends of his. I feel like that experience is something that is so specific. First of all, you could not find another ER physician in any country in the Western world who had that experience, right? Can't.

Yeah.

Totally, yeah.

That is America, man. That is very specific. And the idea that there would be somebody who's performing a serious, important professional job on a day-to-day basis, who is carrying that burden around with him, is just overwhelming. overwhelming to me. And then he talks to me. I said, where are you going next? He goes, we go out to the elementary schools on the South Side and we teach the kids how to be first responders. If someone gets shot—

5th graders, right? Or 4th graders or something?

4th graders. I was like, what? There's this one school he was going to. He says, I always ask the kids to raise their hand if someone they know has been shot. And like in this particular school, basically every hand goes up. 4th graders. So he gives them little kits.

They teach them the ABCs, like alert, call 911, how to apply pressure. One of the kids got to do it.

Could just ask for a new kit because she just used it.

It's crazy. It's absolute madness.

It is crazy. And I feel like one of the problems with the way we discuss this problem is that there's too much distance between the kind of middle-class experience with violence and the kind of violence that occurs at places like the South Side of Chicago. And the majority doesn't understand what's going on there because it's too inconceivable.

And then frankly, kind of too painful to really take on. It's very similar to like the homeless crisis. It's like at some point you've got to go, well, I've got to learn to ignore this or I can't exist here.

Blame starts coming in like, oh, well, they live there for this reason, X, Y, and Z, or they're homeless for this reason. It's more comfortable. That's why I'm not over there.

If you can blame them, it's a little more comforting. Yeah. And then we kind of get right into the first very dishonest thing, and this might anger the liberals, the assault weapon ban bills.

Yeah.

Tell us Tell us about those.

I'm curious. Assault weapons bans have been a kind of hallmark of the gun control movement for 25 years. Always been curious about them. So I call up a guy named Greg Wallace. He's a law professor in North Carolina. He says, come down, see me. I got an AR-15. We'll go and shoot it, and I'll tell you all about the gun. And so I go and see him and go to a range. I have pictures of myself, you know, with the goggles on and, like, get this thing— I'm firing away. And then we have a long conversation about This particular gun. And I realize in talking to him that the problem with assault rifle bans is they don't ban assault rifles. And then I go back and I read the bans, and sure enough, they're very short. You can read this legislation, these bills— we had one in place for a while, and now we have people every year put forth bills in Congress. All you have to do is read them and you realize, oh, they're not banning assault weapons. An assault weapon is a platform It's modular. You can—

It's Lego.

It's Lego. You can just buy bits on the internet and replace them.

Yeah. The AR is a platform upon which you could put sights, you could put a suppressor, you could put a different stock, you could put a different magazine, a different trigger.

Handgunny holder. And what assault rifles ban is the kind of cosmetic adjustments you can make to your assault rifle. They limit the number of those add-ons you can buy on the internet.

They want to outlaw packaging.

They don't want it to look ugly.

Or look like a military weapon.

Nothing to do whatsoever with the underlying gun. The thing that will blow your mind if you read an assault rifle ban is the actual language of the bill is usually like 3, 4 pages, real simple. And you see, oh my God, they're just banning which pieces you can order online. Then there's the appendix, which goes on for like dozens of pages, and it lists all the guns not covered by the ban.

There's a paragraph of the ones that are banned, and then there's 4 pages of exemptions from this.

More than 4. Pages upon pages of, like, every So it's like, wait, this is what we're doing? That's dishonest.

Yes.

Pretending that you're doing something— pretending you're doing something meaningful when you're actually not.

And then also, we are, we are hung up on assault rifles, period. Once you dig into the data, right? This is another crazy revealing part.

People— and I think the gun control movement has taken advantage of this— mistakenly believe that an assault rifle is a machine gun. that you just hold down the trigger and it fires. It's not. It's a gun like any others. It fires one bullet for every pull of the trigger. There's nothing magical about it. It just happens to look different. It's a little lighter, and it uses a smaller caliber ammunition. It is favored by people who do mass shootings, although the majority of people who die in mass shootings die because they're shot by handguns. Handguns are the most lethal thing in mass shootings, not assault weapons.

Well, and then as you're interviewing someone, they're pointing out like an assault is actually bad because it's quite visible. So you cannot be acting with any discretion when you have an assault rifle. It's very visible. You might start running, whereas the handgun can be concealed until the moment I'm next to you. I can fire just as many bullets with it. They're just as lethal.

The absurdity is trying to distinguish a class of weapons and saying, well, this one's worse than—

Yeah.

No, the problem is guns. Just, like, be honest about it. Look, we don't think it's a good idea for people to be carrying around guns, so let's place some limitations on them. That's the right conversation.

Yeah, I don't think that— is rude towards liberals.

Well, they're always the ones behind the assault rifle.

I think most liberals are just like, get rid of them all, I don't want them. But it seems like that's impossible, so how do we find a compromise? I feel like that's their compromise, even though, as you're saying, it's not a compromise because it's nothing. But I can't really blame them.

They are violating this thing. It's, it's dishonest. It's not going to impact anything. It's pageantry. It's not really addressing the issue.

It allows the gun rights people a free pass because they know it's horseshit. They pretend to get all upset about it and secretly are saying, this is a joke.

And this is a number from the book, which is wild. Again, mass shootings are so horrific, obviously, and often who's targeted is the biggest fear we would all have. Yet we are inflating its impact a little bit. So in the last 57 years in the country, 1,342 people have died in mass shootings, which is outrageous. It's terrible. But 2 million people have been killed by guns in general. Again, to have this obsession on this thing, and in particular the weapon of choice for this thing— we're worrying about the leak upstairs in the faucet, and the kitchen's fully engulfed in flames.

If you were thinking rationally about what part of the problem to attack first, that's not the part you would. It's 1,000 people over 50 years. It's not the 2 million. who are otherwise dying in the streets. It's like, let's get our priorities straight here.

Yes.

But you know why?

And all the capital you're using, it's a waste of time. It's not going to be effective. It's not going to address our problem, which is gun violence.

Monica said, you know why? It is every parent's nightmare.

It's every parent's nightmare. But this might annoy people, but the reason people don't really care about the 2 million is because they don't think that will happen to them. Yeah. the mass shooting at the school could happen to them.

But again, statistically, that is incorrect. Statistically, they are worrying about getting struck by lightning when they drive cars.

I fully agree with you. I just think they're like, that happens in that neighborhood. That doesn't happen in my neighborhood. But a mass shooting could happen in my neighborhood.

But it's one of the many things that has to change for this thing to move forward.

The audiobook and the book itself, but in the audiobook version, And I call up a friend of mine, Drew Holcomb, who's a singer in Nashville. Texas adopted. He read the book, and I said, do you have any music that you think might work? Because I like to have music in my audiobooks. And he sent me a song he wrote. It was one morning he was driving his kids to school, and he hears about a mass shooting at a school. And he goes back and he writes a song, and it's called Troubles. And it's this completely haunting, beautiful song. And that's how the audiobook begins, with Drew singing Troubles. And even though I say in the book, mass shootings are a tiny part of the problem, I wanted to have that song because I did understand that it is one of those rare moments where the reality of gun violence in this country hits home to the majority of people. Yeah. When I listened to that song, I started crying because all I could think about was, I understood what he meant. He just dropped his kids off at school, and then he heard that, like, whatever, 25 kids were shot in Uvalde.

There is something about that that is so profane.

Yeah, yeah.

Right? And you can't— I mean, I totally get it that there's an emotional response we have that is in some ways distinct from the kind of rational response.

Yeah, it's a body response.

I would argue it really threatens your understanding of where we live. You have a real hard time with the dissonance of like, wait, is that our society? We have a place where adults go in and shoot the children. That's hard to reconcile that that's where you live and that's the society you're participating in.

Or just that people are capable of that.

Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

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In the song, which is a gorgeous song, which anyone listening should just look up on the internet, the reason I was so moved by it, and it perfectly captures the tone of this book, which was he was expressing the kind of fatigue, not just the kind of horror, but like, I want this to be over. I can't bear to hear about another one of these cases. It was like the accumulation of year upon year upon year of these kinds of things. And the song is all about, like, I just want it to go away. It's a very, very, very moving— and that's the kind of thing I'm trying to get at in The American Way of Killing, which is, it's too much. We can't keep going down this path.

Yeah, the depth of the powerlessness is arresting. Okay, then we get into— 'cause again, there's all these different debates raging, and all of them ultimately, all roads lead back to the Second Amendment. I found this to be the most fascinating chapter in the book. So, let's start. Just tell me about the Stono Rebellion. A guy

named Carl Bogus writes this book on the Second Amendment, which is so genius. He wrote it like 25 years ago. I read it, called him up, and I was like, basically, Carl, this book is genius. Why did this book not change our entire understanding of the Second Amendment? He was like, I don't know. But basically what he does is— so when the Constitution is proposed in the 1780s, All the states have to ratify it. And the most important state— unless Virginia wants to do this, it's not happening.

Well, that's why they had to have George Washington be the president. It's like they had to constantly appease Virginia.

Virginia is a big, big deal. So Virginia has a ratifying convention in Richmond where they debate whether they should join this thing called the American Union. And we have perfect transcripts of their debates. What are they arguing about the whole time? They're arguing about militias. The Virginians are really worried that this new thing called the US, the federal government, will take away militias from the states. Why does this concern them? Because when they talk about militias, they're talking about slave patrols. In many parts of Virginia and South Carolina, a slave owner would be greatly outnumbered by his slaves. Sometimes the ratio is 20 to 1 of slaves to white people. Yeah. You go to bed every night and you're terrified you're gonna get killed in your bed. And so what you do is you have armed white men with guns on horseback who volunteer, and they ride around putting the fear of God into slaves. What they're terrified of is that when the United States starts, the federal government's gonna take away the right of states to have slave patrols. So they go to James Madison, fellow Virginian, Founding Father, son of a plantation owner, and they say, James, write us an amendment that ensures we can still have our slave patrols.

And so he does. So the best way to understand The Second Amendment is— the actual language is, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, comma, the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Now, you do an incredible section on just this sentence. This sentence deserves its own book. Again, I'm going to read it out loud. A well-regulated militia, comma, being necessary to the security of a free state, comma, The right of the people to keep and bear arms, comma, shall not be infringed. This is a particular grammatical device. What's it called?

It's an initial being clause, something that we haven't used with any regularity in our speech for 200 years.

It was waning by the time this was written, right? Yeah. But then there's this insane database of everything James Madison has written. And this scholar you're talking to who's gone through all this, and we come to find out that James Madison loves this grammatical device. He uses it all the time because every debate The debate that centers around this is people are trying to figure out, does the second sentence support the first? Is the first set up for the main point of the second?

Are we talking about malicious here when we talk about guns, or are these just 2 thoughts that happen to reside in the same sentence?

There's no period. Yeah, is it 2 thoughts? There should have been a period. No. Well, we find out quite conclusively, no. We know exactly how he uses these. He uses them all of the time. And in fact, the second part is just a support of the first. So what we learned through this study of how he writes is we know what he was saying.

He was saying the slave patrols that we call militias are so important to the security of my home state of Virginia and other slave-owning states that we cannot possibly in any way limit the ability of our citizens to hold guns.

And I have to say, until reading this, my personal understanding was, oh, the Second Amendment was about our right to have militias in the event of a tyrannical government. I thought this was a direct response to just having fought against the Brits.

No,

I think most people think that.

The problem with that is that the militias during the Revolutionary War performed so terribly. They were, like, badly trained. They were drunk all the time. And George Washington himself gets really upset. He's like, I can't do this. I need a standing army. These guys are incompetent. No one is banging the drum for militias in 1780. We knew They were a disaster. We're talking about slave patrols, and it's of relevance to a handful of slaveholding states whose votes are necessary for the ratification of the US Constitution. That's what this is.

It's 100% an amendment for slave control.

They call this chapter The Slave Owners' Lament. They're just terrified. They're these terrified white guys. When they're having this argument, they're in Richmond. They're there for, like, 3 weeks. The whole time they're there, They're away from their family and kids. And the whole time, they're terrified. They're like, what happens if the slaves— I thought it was just so fascinating, this idea that at the core of the institution of slavery was anxiety. Even as these white men were owning and trading in the lives of Black people, they were terrified throughout numbers.

As they should have been.

As they should have been.

Well, and you talk about this Stono Rebellion, which is a uniquely, if that can be said, cruel task they— have all these men trying to dig a levee, basically, in impossible heat. And finally, they have enough. There— how many of them are there?

Well, it grows.

It's like 100 people or something. And they do— they go door to door. They've had enough, and they start killing people.

I know. I'm surprised that didn't happen all the time.

It happened more than we think, but there were a variety of very, very high-profile rebellions in the South during the period of slavery. The Stono Rebellion that I write about is the one that kind of terrified the Southerners the most, 'cause it was like, these guys go on a rampage.

And I think it's a relevant detail because I think otherwise you might not understand the severity of their fear. To know that they really happened, and that they were sometimes bloody and terrifying, really helps you understand their point of view in a way that makes the whole thing seem quite believable and rational in their weird worldview.

The kind of Gone with the Wind lie was that there was this kind of peaceful coexistence between the loving slave and their kindly paternal owner.

Caretaker.

And you realize, this is not what's going on there. There's, like, anger and anxiety and fear. And this is a deeply problematic relationship. And it's expressed in all kinds of different ways. And one of the ways this is expressed is the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

This truth-bending of what it's really about, Made me think of another parallel truth-bending, which is when they try to argue that the Civil War was about states' rights. This is like a common thing on the far right to say. It was— well, no, that was about states' rights. Well, it was about a state right, not rights. A single right. The right to own people.

It's such a marital spat, by the way. It's the kind of thing you do when you're arguing with your wife.

Yeah.

It's like you pretend there's some kind of broader You just want to leave the party. It's not about like, I got all this— you've had it talking to this boring person. You're uncomfortable. I want to go home.

Yeah. So to find out that the bedrock is solely to prevent slaves from an uprising, and we no longer have slaves.

It's deeply embarrassing for people who want to fetishize the Second Amendment.

Yes.

Another dishonest thing. The court does not own up to that history of the Second Amendment. They pretend it never happened. I would be fine if the court said, we understand the Second Amendment was born out of slavery, but we think there is a contemporary rationale. I would be happier if they did that.

I want to say that that intention comes through throughout the book, which is I don't think you're saying you now need the verdict after we acknowledge all these things to be this or that, or that this has to happen. All you're asking for is like, let us start with an honest conversation.

Yeah,

this is what the amendment was about— controlling slave rebellions.

Just own up to it.

Okay, now another very dishonest conversation that happens is these drops in gun deaths. So I think a lot of us believe we've had some reduction in gun deaths, which we would conclude means less people are shooting each other. But that's not at all the case, is it? First of all, you reveal this thing that the federal government has no fucking clue how many people have been shot. They only know how many people have been killed. Walk us through that a little bit.

This is like this thing which is sort of obvious when you think about it, but for some reason I certainly never thought about the problem this way. A homicide rate is a function of 2 things: the underlying level of violence, how many people are getting shot, and how quickly you get to the hospital. and how good the care is once you get there, right? I live in the Hudson Valley, 2 hours from New York, an hour from a trauma center. If you shoot me, it's gonna take the ambulance half an hour to get there and another hour to get to the hospital. Even a relatively modest wound is gonna result in my death.

Ugh! And we have the data. We know this. We know how many minutes— you're talking to doctors, and they're basically like, you have 26 minutes, pretty much.

If you get shot in the lungs, It's easy to survive it, but you absolutely need to have immediate medical attention within 20 minutes or you're dead.

Yeah, and they know it down to the minutes, right? So it's like 30 minutes, you have X percentage of surviving— pretty high actually nowadays. An hour, you're dead. Don't even drive to the hospital.

Dramatically.

And then a shocking pattern, which is where are the level 1 trauma centers?

But I was gonna say, that same shooting that takes place like in Downtown LA, where I'm really close to USC Medical Center, the same shooting that is a homicide in the Hudson Valley is aggravated assault in downtown LA. I can get to trauma center in 10 minutes, right? So when you realize that, you're like, oh, so it really matters how good the doctors are, and it really matters how close you are to a hospital. So 100 years ago, when the doctors are terrible, you're going to have a lot of things that would today be aggravated assaults be homicides. And then also, if you live a long way from a trauma center, as typically poor people do in this country, you're gonna have an elevated homicide rate. And when you get much better at treating gunshot wounds, your homicide rate's gonna go down, but not because your community is safer, 'cause your doctors are better. I spent an entire chapter talking with this guy. It was a fascinating afternoon. I went to see the greatest gunshot trauma surgeon in the world, a guy named Eddie Cornwell.

You ask him how many career gunshot wounds does he think he's had, and he says he has a pretty solid ballpark. He thinks 3,000.

No!

3,000.

And where is he again?

I don't think there's anyone in history who's treated as many gunshot wounds as he has. 'Cause he starts his career at USC, and so in South Central, at the height of the gang, crack '80s. Then he goes to Baltimore, to Hopkins. Oh, wow. Murder capital of the world. And then he goes to Howard University in Washington, D.C. He knows more about what it means to treat a gunshot than anybody else.

The specificity of— he's like, okay, if you get shot in the spleen, this is gonna happen. I can't get rid of that. No, I can. Who cares? You don't need a spleen. You get shot in the liver, that thing bleeds. I can't get it stopped. Each organ, he'll tell you, if you get shot here, you got this many minutes.

The caliber of the weapon, and like, he's just an encyclopedia. This is this weird thing about America, is that we have developed this paradoxical expertise in treating gunshot wounds.

We have a Michael Jordan of gunshot wounds.

We shouldn't have to have that!

I give the example of— there was a mass shooting in Scotland, one of the only ones they've ever had. It was in the '90s. You know who was in the classroom during the mass shooting? Andy Murray. You know, the tennis player?

Oh, really? Yeah.

He never talks about it. Never talks about it.

Oh, wow.

He was a student?

Hiding under a desk.

Oh!

Those people would have been taken to a local hospital, and it's quite possible the trauma surgeons would never have treated a gunshot wound before. Imagine getting shot here and you go to USC. I mean, they've all seen hundreds.

You might be the second that day, yeah.

As you said, 4th graders know how at this point, to some extent.

Yeah.

Yeah, 3,000. So I want you to define moral hazard. And I love the insurance example.

Yeah. Moral hazard is where someone else steps in and takes responsibility for some problem, which allows you to kind of go on with life as normal. So if you live on the coast and there's a hurricane every 2 years and the government always gives you money to rebuild, you're never going to move. Classic moral hazard. Someone else is paying the price for your— you taking the risk, so why would you bother? You could just continue living there.

You're going to predictably act irrationally and probably a bit immorally.

And I think that we have a little bit of a moral hazard problem because our trauma surgeons are so good, they hide the severity of the problem.

They're shouldering the whole epidemic in a way. Once, as I was saying, the federal government has no idea, but this group of folks sets out to figure this out. And what they do figure out is that it's probably 4 to 1. So, for every 1 homicide death, there are 3 other people who have been shot. The problem's massive. So, 4 to 1, 3 of which we just generally don't even hear about. But another is that without these medical advances that have happened over the last 30 years or so, we would have 45,000 to 70,000 gun deaths over the past 5 years instead of the 15,000 to 20,000 we normally have.

This guy, Eddie Cornell, who I went to see, did this really fun thing where he went through every president who's been shot and talked about whether they would've lived if they were shot in the same way today, all the way up to Reagan. And it was fascinating. Most of the presidents who've been shot in America who died would be alive if they had been shot. Yeah. Then Abraham Lincoln would be dead 'cause it was shots to the head. But everybody else probably would have made it. Wow. Reagan, who makes it, would probably have died if he'd been shot prior to 1940, 'cause he's an older man. He gets a gunshot wound to the chest. Back then, it probably would have been lethal.

Okay, so just to remind everyone, so far we've learned that A, violence and crime are not the same thing. We still have a massive gun shooting problem that's kind of been hidden by medicine. The Constitution, the Second Amendment isn't about what we thought it was about. And now, to me, the second most fascinating revelation of this is now within this violent crime category, there are 2 distinctly different types of violent crime. And what first we have to acknowledge is what we all think of as violent crime and why we think of it that way.

Most people get their understanding of homicide from TV shows. My old assistant, I said, I need you to watch 2 seasons of Law& Order. And I need you to make a spreadsheet of every single homicide and describe the nature of that homicide. So, she does that. And what you discover is, on Law& Order, almost every homicide is what we call instrumental. That is to say, it was carefully planned and executed in a calm, rational way because the killer is in pursuit of some other end. I want something from you. I'm resolving my problem by— that's called instrumental.

I want money. I want to take your thing.

It turns out, then I went and reread or flipped through every Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot book and discovered that every single homicide in Agatha Christie is instrumental. Someone calmly plotting the death of another in pursuit of some other end. So, if all you do, like most of us, our understanding of homicide comes from television shows and pop culture and whatever. Then you think that's what homicide is.

And our lawmakers do. They're not immune to this.

Not immune. In actual fact, there's another kind of homicide which is called expressive violence, which is I shoot you in a jealous rage.

Crime of passion?

Crime of passion.

We get in a fight at Taco Bell and I pull a gun.

Or more commonly would be Dax shoots my brother. and I am really upset, and I shoot Dax, and then Dax's brother comes after my cousin, and then my cousin comes after—

The Culture of Honor, one of your books. Yes, yes.

That's called expressive violence. And the question is, what kind of violence do we have in America? Expressive.

Our entire legal system is set up to deal with instrumental violence because we know that if we have a deterrent on the table, when you're plotting and you're considering the consequences, if you think you'll get prosecuted, and then it turns out when you get prosecuted, you get prosecuted, you're going to rot in a prison for 30 years. We hope that'll be a deterrent. Our entire investment, all of our resources, are set up to deal with just that, really— instrumental homicides.

But in fact, overwhelmingly, America's lethal violence is expressive. It's people having fights and settling feuds and getting caught up in the moment and doing things they regret and not thinking straight and not being able to resolve their conflicts in a peaceful manner. It's 18-year-olds who are drunk and waving a gun around in a bar. To Dax's point, these are not people who are thinking rationally through the consequences of their actions.

Yeah.

No, they're not plotting and weighing out the pros and cons or the risk-reward. And the numbers are insane. So the number of instrumental homicides is 18%.

Is that including mass shootings? Because that is intentional, right?

Well, there's— so to our earlier point, I mean, that's just such a trivial small number that—

Okay.

It

wouldn't even move it even if we included it or didn't include it.

A mass shooting would be an instrumental.

Okay.

But 18% of the total number of homicides in our entire legal system and law enforcement is set up to deal with. So even if we were perfect, if we created the deterrent that stopped all instrumental murders, we would reduce the total number by 18%. That is an absurdity. I can't think of another thing that we're spending more money on.

That's another example of a version of dishonesty, that you've completely misperceived the nature of your problem. You're trying to solve a problem you don't have. That's what I'm trying to get at in the book, is that kind of silliness.

Yes, you say murders are overwhelmingly driven by arguments, and Americans resolve their arguments with guns. That is what's unique about us.

Yeah.

Yes. It feels like it should be easy to fix that.

Okay, now here's a fucking juicy one. And again, this one, the liberals aren't gonna like hearing this.

He always looks at me when—

I noticed that.

Yeah. Have you noticed that?

Monica,

you

love the two. She's more liberal than I am. When I bring up a centrist, I go, the centrists are gonna hate this. I stare in that mirror right there.

Yeah. He, he, yeah. Okay. Well, we'll move on, but go. Yeah.

Okay. I just wanna set this up and then I want you to ask her the question. Okay. Berlin and LA are perfect comps for one another in that they both have 3.9 million people. They're both incredibly wealthy cities. They're very educated cities. They are great comps. The LAPD employs 8,000 officers. How many officers do you think Berlin employs?

1,000. 750.

Kristen guessed 800. Now that I've learned this in your book, I've asked like 12 people this. It's like the funnest thing to ask people.

Oh no, is it like 200? 18,000. What?

Yeah. By the way, I did some more research on that. If you add in their trainees, their technical staff, their civilian staff, they have 26,400.

Wait,

isn't that a mind scrambler?

Yeah. Huh. You could do that for every American city. Just do a simple comp with a similarly sized—

Amsterdam and this city and—

Dallas and what have you. As a general principle, Western European cities have twice as many cops per capita as American cities. We are dramatically, jaw-droppingly underpoliced in this country. When foreign police chiefs come here, they're like, what are you guys doing? Where are the cops?

Yeah. Wow. Are they getting paid more there?

I don't know about that. The larger context, the thing that's important to understand is that as a share of GDP, European countries and America spend exactly the same amount of money on public safety. Exactly the same. There's no difference. We spend all of our money on prisons and we scrimp on police. They spend all their money on police and they scrimp on prisons. The simple question is, if you had to choose between those 2 strategies, what would you rather do? Have lots of police and try and prevent crime, or lots of prisons and just punish people after they've done the crime? It's a no-brainer.

We should add But the expenditures of our police departments are also different. We have tons of paramilitary equipment that gobbles up a ton of the budget.

But we have that because the police are undermanned. They feel they have to project a certain kind of aggression and force. It's a response to the fact there's not enough of them.

Yeah, that's interesting.

They're completely understaffed and overwhelmed, and they have to have dramatic shows of force. There's this crazy comp, which is It's maybe more interesting to look at police shootings per capita to measure the stress of this being understaffed and overwhelmed. And the only countries that have a similar rate of police killing civilians, here's the group we're in: Pakistan, Iran, Brazil, and South Africa or something. That's our compadres in this.

They all share a significant thing with the United States is they are all countries that are also underpoliced. Police violence is a thing that the police do when there's not enough of them. And when you look at the countries in the world that have the most police per capita, they have the best-behaved police, the lowest levels of police violence. After George Floyd, we got this completely backwards. We should never have concluded that we need to defund the police because the police were behaving badly. No. You have to refund the police if they're behaving badly. A better way of putting it is, I had this fantastic conversation with this guy called Dan Oates, who's a very, very interesting, very progressive police chief.

He's in Denver now? Is that where he's at? He's

in Aurora, Colorado.

Aurora. Okay. Yeah.

That was his last big job. And I simply asked him, if I gave you European levels of police, if I essentially doubled the size of your department, what would you have done differently? It's like he'd never been asked this question before. And he went on, he just talked.

He knew immediately what he would do.

He was like, Like, I could have real engagement with the community. I could have liaison with the schools, because the schools are where you spot the troubled kids first, and you could intervene and help them before they get in trouble. I could get to a bar fight in 5 minutes as opposed to 10 minutes or 15 minutes. He went on and on and on all these things. And you realize he knew what he had to do to be an effective and much more friendly police department. Yeah. But he couldn't do it because he didn't have enough cops. And the result was that his cops, you stay in your car and you race from one emergency to the next. And then when you get there, you have to project force because—

You're overwhelmed. Yeah, you're by yourself.

The real job of a police officer is to know the people in the community they're policing, right? To have personal relationships like your neighbor, to have people trust you, tell you stuff, share with you their problems, be willing to come to you. And the only way you can do that is with time. and direct face-to-face contact. You can't do that when you've got half as many cops as you need.

Also, when the citizens are picking up the phone calling 911 and the people arrive 40 minutes later, that sends a crazy clear signal to them. They're not there to help you or protect you, right? So the trust is gone because of the response time. He gives this really poignant example, too, of an officer who sees a guy getting hot with a girl. They're outside of a bar. He's starting to yell, and we're leading towards probably violence. And again, we know now that the vast majority of murders are this exact situation. And the police officer intervenes and he tells the guy, go fucking take a walk. And they drive the woman home and they probably prevented something. There's no one's arrested. Just having them present as a pressure gauge for what we know is the vast majority of these murders are these situations where by the time anyone gets there, everyone's escalated to a point where someone's dead.

The important point is, and this is A place where I think people who— liberals who are upset at this line of argument will come around. You don't add cops to do more of the same. You add cops to do something different.

Yes, I think that's right.

If all you're doing is just having a couple hundred more squad cars and a couple more hundred guys driving around in riot gear, that's not helping. What you need to do is to use these extra people to do something you're not doing now. That's the kind of opportunity.

Yeah. And also, even in this city, right, it's like the scope of problems they have to deal with is preposterous. They're dealing with an enormous mental health crisis. Half their calls are dealing with that. I mean, they're not psychologists. They're not trained for that. And then the next call is like, enter this home where we've heard a gunshot and shit breaking. It's like, you know, a date with violence. No one's really specialized. You're just asked to deal with all this crazy stuff.

This city is actually a chronically underpoliced city. And it's no surprise that the LAPD has one of the worst reputations for police violence. 'Cause, I mean, the place is vast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, how do you police a place this vast with a small number of people? The only way you can do it is to behave like an occupying army, which is what they did for years.

Yeah.

Right? Whenever I come to LA, 'cause I come from New York, which is one of the few cities that probably does have a reasonably adequate number of officers, I'm always like, where are the— I'm driving along, like, the 405 at 10 o'clock at night, and everyone's going 90 miles an hour. I'm like, where's the cops? Yeah. This is like—

well, let's not put them there. Yeah, I'm signing off on, on being in my neighborhood, but let's keep them off the highway. That's my favorite part of Los Angeles.

One of those guys going 90 on a Friday night in one of your, uh, speedy cars.

Oh yeah, I'm guilty. I'm very guilty. They are— they're putting up cameras though. That's the new thing. I think the party's over. Yeah, and I'm trying to figure out when will I get the first one in the mail.

Flock comes for Dax. I'm still waiting for my invitation to the all-cars Podcast of Jack Shepherd. Alienate your audience in one fell swoop.

That could be its own show. All cars.

All that happens is Monica just cuts it right out. I'll do it. Sometimes I'll get carried away with it.

There was one up. I think the first time you came, there was a lot of cars. I can keep like 2 minutes max.

Yeah. And then you're out. Which I don't think is fair because my appetite for her clothing talk and her shopping is, I would say, pretty deep. I'm all ears.

I don't know that I've ever gone Over 2 minutes talking about— with a guest.

Okay, with a guest.

Maybe on a fact check.

Yeah, you've done 5 to 10 on astrology about 3 dozen times. And again, I— Guess what?

The audience likes that. Okay? They love it. I

have a quick question for you, Monica.

Yeah.

You're big into astrology?

Not really. See, I get painted. I get painted as a crazy liberal. I get painted as a crazy astrologist. No, I like it. I think it's fun.

Can you guess what sign I am?

Okay, this is fun. I think—

Let's be honest right out of the gate, you only have an 8% chance of succeeding.

I don't believe in astrology, but I am astonished at how many people who believe in astronomy always know what sign they are.

They get years. Are you Cancer? Are you a Pisces?

Look how cute Malcolm's smile is.

You're not a Virgo?

Yeah, I am.

You are? So am I. I'm a double Virgo.

What's your birthday?

August 24th. When's yours?

September 3rd.

Okay. September Virgos are different from August Virgos. So this might be part of why— That's why you didn't get it.

Me and my mom are both Virgos.

I should have known that. I mean, it does make sense. You're very reasonable, logical. It's the best sign, so it makes sense.

If I was drawing a comparison, my conclusion, I think, would be just as scientific as I would go, oh, Virgos have very expressive and inviting eyes. That's what you guys have in common more than probably anything else.

My kids are both Leos.

Oh, nice.

And my wife has strong feelings about Leos. Uh-oh. And she's constantly pointing out the Leos. And on this, I have to say, something seems to be going on with Leos.

They're really fun, right?

The number of kind of high, strong personality types who are Leos is kind of epic.

Oh, interesting. Don't you think?

Like Obama's a Leo. My wife always says, of course he's a Leo.

But I didn't notice that about being high-strung. I thought that's just—

Not high-strung, strong personality.

Oh yeah, yeah. Strong personality. Yeah, strong personality. Yes. Dominate the room. Extroverted. You're probably a Leo rising. I think that's—

I would bet my life on it, Monica. I would bet my life on it.

You should. If anyone makes you, you should.

The best is, you know, we had Adam Grant on recently and, you know, he wrote a whole piece, a whole takedown of astrology, which is— He hates it. He hates it, which is also just a hilarious fight to pick. I think he hates it because he just doesn't

It wasn't like his sign.

But I gotta tell you, I heard a female comedian make the most astute observation I've ever heard, which is the stock market is men's astrology.

Oh, that's so true.

Yeah, because none of it's real.

Spot on. It's total bullshit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, one thing I wanted to talk about— this is kind of back to what's causing all these gun deaths, and it is these arguments. And you have a little section about this BAM program, which is kind of training kids to de-escalate. It's one of these things that you would easily write off as like, this is, again, pageantry. It's like, yeah, in a classroom, this and that. But then the data was pretty shocking.

He gets into something that I've been exploring since writing the book a lot about what does homicide prevention look like?

Yeah.

And homicide prevention flows from that insight that a lot of what homicide is, is like basically young men Settling beefs with violence. So then what you should be doing is trying to intervene or train them to resolve their conflicts in a more peaceable manner. So one thing I talk about in the book is this program in Chicago where you teach conflict resolution to teenage boys, a year-long class. They've done studies on it and it's shown dramatic decreases down the line. The more interesting one is the one I've been looking at recently in Baltimore. Baltimore's had this dramatic decline in homicides. And they've taken this idea even further. They have a meeting every week, and they sit in a room with 25 people. They go through a slide deck of all of the crimes that week, and they'll say, okay, so Joey got shot on Wednesday at 8:00 PM on this block. Who knows Joey? And someone will say, I know Joey's family. Can you go and see Joey's dad and Get him to go with you to Joey's brother, 'cause we're really worried that Joey's brother's gonna retaliate. They go right away. And they go and they bring a pastor, and they bring a crisis counselor, and they sit down with Joey's brother, and they say, Dude, I know you posted on social media that you're going after this guy.

No, please don't do it. Can we help you? They're not arresting anyone. They're not doing anything about guns. They're not bringing in the National Guard. They're not using any kind of show of force. They're literally showing up at Joey's house, on an afternoon with someone that Joey trusts and saying, you gotta chill.

And that works.

Have you seen that great Frontline called The Interrupters? And there's a group in Chicago that does a very similar thing, The Interrupters. And the dude who goes up and just knocks on these doors, and he's not with the police.

That is homicide prevention. That's what we should be doing. The police give you the intelligence. They say, here's the social circle of the shooter and the social circle of the guy who got shot. Here's who we think in that social circle is most likely to commit an act of violence. Come with me and the pastor. We'll go and try and interrupt the chain.

Yeah, this dude knocks on the door, he's like, hey, can I take you to breakfast? He's like, you want to take me to breakfast? He's like, yeah. He's like, when? He's like, right now. He goes, let me put my pistol up. And he goes inside and puts his gun— and they go off to breakfast. You're like, fuck, that was incredible. Yeah.

There's a guy named David Kennedy. He was a kind of pioneer inside these ideas about homicide prevention. One of the insights that drove it was something that he— he was doing all his work in Boston in the '90s, and he just was sort of new to this area. And he was talking to the gang unit of the Boston PD, and someone says to him, you know, everyone says these kids are predators. They're not. They're scared. And that insight has never left him. He's like, if you think they're predators, you think all you could do is lock them up and put them away forever. They're not. They're carrying guns 'cause they're terrified. And because they've lost 15 friends, and they're traumatized, and they're really worried that they're gonna be next. That is a very different problem than someone who is profoundly evil and is out to inflict as much pain as possible on their environment.

Look, I own guns. I'll be very clear. I own guns out of fear. I'm married to a very famous woman, and there are people that are mentally unwell that think they're married to her. And so, that is something that's in my mind, right? That I need to be ready for the day someone comes in the house. So I don't have one out of recreation or a desire to do anything other than I have a fear. This is a solution.

That's what most people who have guns think. It's there for my protection. It's there for the protection of my family. But then everyone has a gun.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

I've been saying this now everywhere I go because it's so, so profound. I have this very, very smart friend, Charles, who's from the South. And he said the thing that people don't understand is that the reason liberals hate guns and conservatives like them is the same. It's fear in both cases. Yes. Yeah. One case, it's the fear of the other with the gun. And I'm so scared I need a gun myself.

It's all fear of guns.

That's exactly right.

That framing is what broke my own polarization. There was one of the elections, and it just hit me, oh, people aren't voting for what they want. They're actually voting to address the things they're terrified about. So for liberals, it's global warming, it's this and that. And then for conservatives, it's this. And I'm like, oh, you just have 2 groups that are very afraid of some things, and that's what's driving it. But both people are scared of some things. That makes me a lot more compassionate to people I disagree with because I, I see that they're afraid too.

100%. And it also It also makes it clear to you that confrontation and anger is the worst strategy whatsoever for dealing with those who disagree with you. If someone's scared and you're yelling at them, that's not solving the problem.

They just ratchet up higher into fight or flight. Okay, so this isn't a criticism, but I'll say this chapter had me begging for you to inquire about— under all of that, when you hear these examples of the arguments that go south, South, almost all of them start as the same thing. It's a respect issue. And I think in these poor communities, when you have absolutely nothing other than that, it cannot be taken from you. I want to acknowledge as well, this level of being disrespected isn't happening in the upper income families where a kid's you've got innumerable ways to have status. But when everyone has nothing and there are no resources and no opportunities, all you have is your respect. So you're being threatened for the one thing you have. So of course the stakes are higher. And it's like, that needs to come into these analyses as well. It's like, why are these people willing to die over this notion of respect? Which sounds preposterous to someone who's privileged, but not if you're poor. That's a big undercurrent of all this.

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, the subject is bleak and I didn't want to write a bleak book. I wanted to tell stories around this. That was my one goal. My second goal was, I didn't want it to be a long book because I feel like you can get overwhelmed.

Yeah, that's an even bigger problem to bring— Yeah, it's like, well, how do we deal with poverty?

What you just said is a classic example of 100%, I could have explored that more. I wanted to tell very specific narratives about this.

Yeah, I don't think it would've been right. I guess I wanted to ask you that 'cause I was almost more curious if you did and then got rid of it. Like, I just wondered what—

I thought about it.

Perhaps there were things that you— this is really important, yet it needs to be thinned out.

There's a very famous guy who I don't mention in the book called Marvin Wolfgang, who's one of the most famous criminologists of the 20th century. All of this thinking starts with Marvin Wolfgang. And he was at the University of Pennsylvania, and he does this thing where— which at the time was very unusual. He's a brand-new, young academic, and he decides— first of all, he wants to go through the homicide records of the Philadelphia Police Department. All of them. So, he goes there and introduces himself. And every day after work, from 8, sometimes until 2 in the morning, he's in the basement in the archives, just reading through these cases. Then he decides he wants to ride around with them. And now ride-alongs are common. This is the '50s. And he spends 3 years, every Friday and Saturday night, riding around with Philadelphia police officers. Wow. And then he decides— it's the first study of its kind. He gets the record on every single kid born in Philadelphia in 1945, and then follows their entire criminal history. 'Cause he wants to know— so there's 10,000 kids born in Philadelphia, boys born in Philadelphia in 1945, and he follows all 10,000 until they're, like, 25.

Oh, my God.

And to see who gets in trouble with the law, what percentage. And what he discovers is this incredibly essential fact, which is the group of kids who end up on the wrong side of the law is tiny. This problem that seems to affect all of society and that has got us all terrified is— in his case, it was like 675 kids out of 10,000 basically did all the violence. And then this has been replicated. There's a famous study on the West Side of Chicago, an area of 50,000 people. The number of people at any given time who are at risk for being shot or shooting someone is 400. That's the size of an elementary school. You could totally know those people.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you had something in one or the other where there was a pocket of about a block, right? There's like, there are blocks in America where if you only contain that block, it would wipe out—

When you realize that, you realize, oh, we don't have to engage in this kind of really, like, lofty conceptual rhetoric about— no, no, no. Just find out who those 400 people are. Give them some help. Talk to them. It goes back to the— why does that interrupter stuff you were talking about, why does that work? 'Cause they know who it is! Yeah. It's not a mystery, right?

Yeah.

You can see who has a criminal record, who's resorted to violence in the past, whose friend just got shot, and who's grieving.

There's very obvious patterns to be observed. Okay, the last part is part 3, which is moral absurdity. And I wanna go through a little bit of what have been the historic challenges to the Second Amendment. And I think we need to talk about the Sullivan Act, 'cause I think suicide Again, another shield the gun advocates that people like to hide behind is like, it's all suicides. As if that's fine.

This comes up in one of the most distressing Supreme Court cases of recent years. It's a case called the Bruen case, in which the court decided to throw out a law that had been in place in New York State for 100 years, which basically made it very, very difficult for anyone to own a handgun in New York State. state. You had to get a license, and the license was really hard to get. And like I said, New Yorkers had lived with this law very happily for 100 years. It was put in place because of a famous murder in downtown Manhattan. A prominent writer was murdered by a kind of crazed fan. And it was so upsetting to people at the time that they were like, that's enough. So we've been living with this law for 100 years. What was discovered was the existence of this law didn't really affect the homicide rate, because most homicides are illegal guns smuggled in from out of state. But it really did affect the suicide rate, because most people who attempt to commit suicide regret— if they have a second chance, they would take it. Yeah. It is an expressive act of self-violence.

And if there is a handgun lying around and accessible, people are likely to shoot themselves and die. And if there's no handgun around, they're more likely to either not try or try a less lethal lethal means.

This parallels your town gas story, no?

Yes, it does. Exactly. From how many books ago? I can't even remember.

England used to have a form of gas that they used in their ovens, and it was highly poisonous.

People committed suicide that way.

At crazy rates. And the second they got— what, they put a smell in it or they got rid of it, it dropped plummets.

Yeah.

So New York State historically has had a suicide rate that's half the national average. Given the fact that there are more suicide deaths in this country than there are homicide deaths, it's very, very big deal. The court throws out, in this case called Bruen, uses this facacta interpretation of the Second Amendment to throw out this New York law of 100 years standing, and never once mentions suicide. So, like, the justification for this law, the fact that it saves thousands of lives— Yeah. —was of no interest whatsoever to the court. All they cared about was that this was a technical violation of this strange historical interpretation they'd put on the Second Amendment. And I just thought, like, this is pretty much the nadir.

But something that's working.

It was working. There wasn't any huge controversy over it. A couple of guys wanted to have handguns and couldn't get them. I don't even understand why it was necessary. I'm fine if other states don't want to do this. I think this is something that should be handled by the states.

Yeah.

New York's a liberal state. If New Yorkers want to make it hard to get a handgun, God bless.

Yes.

That was an example of the kind of thing— there are times when the kind of necessary truce between different sides of the political spectrum gets violated unnecessarily. We can actually live together if we respect— but every now and again, someone goes too far. This is an example of going too far. You didn't have to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah, let them have that.

But it was this kind of indifference to the fact that handguns play a really, really huge role in suicide. That was so upsetting to me.

And also, anytime you start poking around and find out these decisions, what foundation it's all stacked upon, we come to Sir John Knight, right?

Oh, God. I don't even know who he is.

This is like a fairy tale.

The chapter is intended to be kind of hilarious. It is sort of hilarious if it were not so tragic. But one of the foundational figures in the gun rights movement's constitutional argument is this crazy 17th-century English knight called Sir John Knight, who's like a racist and a slave owner, who has some legal tussle with the king, which was discovered by gun rights people in the '80s, and they have contrived to make it into this seminal landmark case that ought to alter our interpretation of the Second Amendment today. The whole thing is made up. I talked to all these English historians, by which I mean historians in England who study their own history, and they're like, what are you guys doing? You've completely misunderstood what this was about.

Yeah, the version they like to use is that Sir John Knight took some guns to a church, raised hell with all of his guns, then was tried and found innocent. So because he was acquitted, And he did. Come to find out through all this research, A, he didn't bring his guns into the church.

The issue here is the court's really interested in the historical antecedents of the Second Amendment. And their argument is, we need to understand the way the founders were thinking when they drafted that sentence. And so the significance of Sir John Knight is, hey, wait a minute, this is a case from England from the 17th century in which a man was accused of carrying guns illegally and got acquitted. And the court says, look, even the English were in favor of gun rights back in the '70s.

We have a rich history of defending this right.

We have a rich history of this, going back to Sir John Knight, 1786. This is like used as justification that when they did the Second Amendment, they were drawing on hundreds of years of precedent in respecting the rights of people to carry guns. But it turns out the case that they're using and pointing to is completely made up. That's not what it was about at all. He wasn't even carrying a gun into the church.

He thought there was a Catholic conspiracy afoot. He was delusional. Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I just loved it. In your textbook signature way, there were so many counterintuitive things I learned in the book. And to your earlier point, it's so fun. The stories, if you It's in all these interviews with these experts. It's them speaking. You're getting so much. You're feeling the fatigue of them. You're feeling what they've been through. It's not just the words. You really get a sense of these people who have dedicated their lives to dealing with this fucking mess we refuse to confront. I guess my last question to you is, I'm so pessimistic. Just, I don't know how we would get 2/3 votes on anything, literally. Like, should we outlaw water? That couldn't be accomplished. The only thing I thought of, you just kind of said, I was like, could we minimally make this a states' rights issue? Let's let the states that want it have it. And then guys, you just live with all the violence. That's fine. Do you think there's any way out of this?

I think it's time to turn our back on Washington. And what I was describing about, like, what was happening in Baltimore and the Chicago thing I talk about, I think we gotta do just grassroots stuff. I think that states and cities have to kind of rearrange their priorities between prisons and police. We've gotta pursue a lot more of this direct homicide intervention stuff. And then just leave the debates. If it happens at all, it's gonna happen 50 years from now, and that doesn't help on the ground right now. Maybe this is a wake-up call that we spend too much time and attention trying to solve every problem through legislation. And maybe you should just be looking at other ways of addressing this stuff.

I agree. Yeah. And then there's, like, even strata of that. It's like we're waiting on the national level for everything to be solved, and And then we're ignoring the state level, we're ignoring the city level, you know, we're ignoring everything we have impact on and hoping that, you know, one person we all anoint is gonna solve all these problems for us.

The book is not intended to be depressing. It's supposed to kind of illuminate.

I think it's incredibly optimistic because what it tells me is, like, it's not a mystery. We know that we're trying to solve the wrong murders. They're not a significant percentage of what's going on. Like, there's so much of it I think is incredibly encouraging. To me, this book outlines many ways in which this, which felt unsolvable, feels solvable. I feel like it's very optimistic. I also think it's weirdly probably your most important book.

Oh, wow.

I mean, truly, just potential impact on our world. This is, I think, your most important book. And I just love it, man. I love it. It's so good. I'm grateful that you do what you do. do, sincerely.

Thank you.

And I said it publicly, but I'll say it to your face. We were embarrassed to be nominated for a Golden Globe and not sharing that with you. That was ridiculous. And we used every interview to say, this is ridiculous.

I know why. I think it's because only shows that were every week were nominated. I don't think it was limited series. Otherwise, you would've won. You would've swept it.

There is no reason to diminish your own considerable contributions to society in order to uplift me.

That's fair, but if we have to lose—

It's still true.

Yeah, unfortunately, it's still true. Did

you guys go?

We went, yeah.

Did you dress up and everything?

Yeah, it was fun.

What did Dax wear?

He dressed up.

An Italian dinner jacket and shorts.

He wore a full suit and nice shoes. No, did you wear—

Do you own a suit? I can't even imagine Dax in a suit.

You wear tux like probably 8 times a year. I have to wear a tux all the time.

Really?

I mean, enough so that I own a couple.

I think actually Dax would look good dressed up. He does.

Don't you think? He looks very handsome, and it is not what you're used to seeing. Yeah, it's like a good dress-up. So it's a nice change. Sometimes he wears Converse because he just can't let himself wear the nice shoes.

My new thing, and my wife has signed off on it, is now I wear a nice black t-shirt under my tux. So that's kind of my new move, and it still works. It still works.

What do you wear on your feet?

That depends.

I think I do draw the Converse thing. No, there's lots of nice shoes. You

don't—

He likes the Converse.

I think you can deviate from— you can non-conform in other ways.

Okay, you're drawing a hard line.

For you,

that's like putting 4 spares on this beautiful BMW I saw you arrive in, by the way.

Thank you, thank you. He refuses to blend in. Go 6th, baby. Can I do a shout out to my favorite car rental agency?

Okay, you can keep that in.

What is it? It's an M240? What is it?

M240.

M240. What do you love about it so much? Has it got a 4-cylinder?

6.

Oh, that's a lot of motor for that tiny car.

Straight 6. Adequate? It would be better if it was, uh, manual, but it's not. Can't rent a manual, sadly.

Does it have a dual clutch trans though? Is it a proper—

I don't even know. This is the first time I've driven it. It's delightful. It's delightful. It's the best BMW. Other ones are bloated now.

Okay.

I have a car question, actually.

Oh, tell them what you're doing with your car.

Oh my God, that's what I want. Would you ever—

First of all, do you know the car I bought her?

No.

I bought her a C43.

Oh.

It's very nice.

Very nice. Very nice. Appropriate. Thank you. I like it.

You bought the perfect car for her.

Thank you.

I like it.

I love it.

A little bit of razzmatazz too. Like, it's got some pops.

I hear her leaving her house. She lives across the street and I always know when Monica leaves. I'm like, that's how it should be. People should be warned she's coming.

There should

be a

heads up.

Well, do you eat in your car?

Do I eat in my car?

Yeah.

I do not, but my wife does.

Okay.

I object.

Oh, okay.

I simmer.

Sure.

And she looks at me with hostility, and then she will say things like— she's talking about her own mother— my own mother never let me eat in the car. I'm like, wait,

wait. Yeah, what are you supposed to do?

What are you doing? Your mother's on my side.

You were taught.

I do a lot.

She stopped at In-N-Out the other day. Well, fucking— she left a tuna fish sandwich in that car, and then she went to In-N-Out the other day and said, Monica, you have this beautiful German masterpiece with this gorgeous leather, and it smells like the inside of a fucking hamburger joint.

I was hungry.

That's exactly—

go inside and eat.

No, I don't want to go inside. I need to be efficient.

I need to be wrapped in leather when I eat.

I ate in the car fast.

I'm in shock. The tuna fish sandwich you left in your brand new C43.

It's not brand new. When did I get it? 2020.

4 years, I don't know.

It's old.

Oh, is it that old?

Yeah, there's very little miles on it. It runs great, it's super nice. But no—

I plug the tires on it probably every, what, 18 months?

The tires are bad on that car. I don't know what's going on with those tires, but there's always issues. It's definitely the car's problem, not mine. But okay, so you're a no on eating. That's where I'll stop the—

Okay, yeah. I mean, you wanna eat something that doesn't have a ton of fragrance to it. Sure, you wanna pound some rice cakes in there or something.

No, let it—

all the—

yeah,

that's at least solvable with a vacuum. Once you get that deep hamburger smell in there—

oh my God, it smells great. I think you'd love to know

the lengths of which they go to to make that interior, where they're sourcing that leather to drip animal style fries on it.

I said it's not like I made the seat a plate. I wasn't like putting the burger on the leather.

I'm gonna spare you to tell him everything that's happened in that car. Okay. Malcolm, I adore you. Thank you so much for coming. And people, please, please, please read or listen to The American Way of Killing: An Invention of an Epidemic. Out

now.

Now. Oh my God, right now when you finish this. I promise you, this is in my top 10 books of all time already. Listen to it immediately. The American Way of Killing. Be well.

He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's gonna let 'em have the facts.

I wanna start— oh, is baby tired? Tight, tight?

Well, a little, but for good reason, because I had breakfast this morning with Callie, my best friend.

At what time?

9:15.

Okay. Well, this might coordinate beautifully with my first question for you.

Great.

Which is, I was driving Lincoln to play rehearsal last night. And we drove through the neighborhood, which we never do. And there were so many cars in front of your house. And was one of them Simone's? Did I recognize? Correct. I'm good with these cars. You're very good.

You're very good.

What was happening at Casa J. Padman?

I was getting ready for another event.

Oh my God. You had back-to-back events.

I did.

Did they lose your car this time?

No, I Ubered.

There we go.

Yes, I did think about bringing my car and I was like, I learned my lesson.

We'll never do it again.

Not doing that.

What was the event last night?

It was for the Who What Wear 20th anniversary celebration. Who What Wear is a really cool, um, started out as a little website and kind of turned into this whole—

Media empire?

Yes, um, by my friend Hillary Kerr. She started that. And, um, 20 years ago.

What is it?

Well, again, it's like a website, but then there's a podcast. It's a whole thing.

It's, uh, um, it's a web.

It's a web. It's an empire.

It's a content machine.

Yeah, about style.

Style?

Yes.

Oh, that's a lot of pressure.

Oh, trust me, I know.

What did you wear? Did you post any pics?

Yeah, you do not check my Insta.

I wasn't on all day because I was, uh, researching.

I wore a very In my opinion, cute outfit.

Okay.

It was a leather skirt.

Oh my goodness.

But it had a really flowy top on top, on top, that kind of looked like a dress, but it's actually a shirt top, but it's long. So there's only a little bit of the skirt poking out the bottom.

The leather skirt. Okay.

Both items from The Row.

Oh, okay. So you were excited to put this on? Yeah, very.

But I had— I did have a— this is just like, people will be mad, but what are we gonna do? This is my life. I had some outfits I was gonna wear for— I had put aside to maybe wear for this, but I never got anything altered in time. So then yesterday morning, I did have a panic. I was like, I had all these events. What am I doing? I don't know what—

None of this stuff fits.

Nothing fits. What am I gonna do? And so I, whether we say this is fortunate or unfortunate, have a direct line to The Row.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. How could you label it anything but fortunate? Well, 'cause it's gonna be a cash drain.

Exactly. Yes. Because I texted my friend.

It's like me having an accountant bring a trailer. That would be dangerous. That's the auction website for cars.

Yeah, context clues. Um, yes, so Max, who works at The Row LA and is—

Your best friend.

He is a very— he's— he is, yes. I adore him. Um, yeah, I just texted him. I said, I have this event, and is there anything in the store that looks cute? And he sent me a bunch of pictures, a bunch of things, and we picked this, and he just had it messengered right on

up. Oh my God.

It's— it is really— because my, you know, I have my credit card there.

Oh, well, you don't even have to— I don't even have to— Oh yeah. I know it's bad. That's not good.

It's bad. It's bad. It's bad.

Yeah. You basically have an Amazon account at the Row. That's dangerous.

Yeah. Prime.

I'm trying to think what would be the most dangerous place for me to—

You said rent a trailer.

Rent a trailer. Yeah. I love renting trailers. I would rent more trailers than I could tow.

What is it called?

I do have more trailers than I could tow.

Yeah. I think for you it would be like, like high factors or like

medical equipment. Yeah, that would be not good if I was dialed there. Um, newly I've been really— I've been into shopping a little bit lately.

Yeah, you have a cute outfit on.

Well, I have like, you know, I love the God's True Cashmere. Those are my favorite shirts. They're too hot for me. I run too hot and they're cashmere. But my Double R Ralph— oh, it's time. Okay, let me look at your Instagram. We pause this for—

we pause because we have stuff to do.

Broadcast for this. Oh yeah, so cute. It hangs out a lot, that skirt, I would say. Not a little bit.

Certain, depending on certain angles.

It's past your knees in this photo, unless that's your purse.

Um, the skirt's past my knees?

Yeah, in this photo.

Yeah, it is a little past, but the top— see where the top ends?

Top ends mid-thigh.

Right.

Exactly.

Skirts below the knee. Correct. I was happy. I was very happy with it. It hasn't come through yet. Oh, my God. It's crazy.

Is that Erica in that photo?

Anna.

Oh, I see Anna.

Oh, no, that's Mara. Mara Rozak.

Whoa, she kind of looks— without my glasses, looks like Erica.

I could see that. I could see that. Mara Rozak was one of the cards you saw at my house. Mara is one of the best hairstylists to live.

In America, USA.

You know, there's just so many ways to be talented in this world. Like, I— it's wild. What she does is unmatched. Voodoo. Voodoo. And then, like, Anna came, and she wasn't getting her hair done, but then Mara just kind of looked at it, and she just, like— she kind of blew on it, and the whole thing just transformed.

Came to life.

It's a talent. It's a real talent. Okay, well, I'm like, this sucks, 'cause it's not coming back.

It hasn't come through yet?

I'm just gonna keep it. They're 2 minutes late.

You should send someone a text. Oh, I have a funny update. Speaking of late, do you remember my ENT story? Did I even tell it? Yeah. Yeah, that I sat in the room for an hour. Yes. Okay, and then I've been having way too many ruminations about— is it up?

I'm waiting. Sorry. I don't really know why I didn't tell you the story. Hold on, I'm gonna send a text.

Yeah, send a text and double check.

I'm in the middle of a very important recording.

Oh my God, you can really hammer on it when you want to. Oh my God. Oh my God, you're gonna break the screen. Oh fuck, you have slash marks all over the lower part of your— oh my God, you look like a little gremlin. Oh my God, is that— there's a chimp texting. No wonder you replace your phone every 18 months.

Oh, by the way, my brand new phone sucks.

Okay.

I wanna say something about my brand new book.

No, we can't, 'cause it'd be like Kelly Clarkson.

Isn't that such a fun—

I don't even know it. I just know that I don't wanna—

Well, but let me tell you something.

Yeah.

It's not like Kelly Clarkson because my beef is not with a teeny store. It is with one of our largest corporations.

I know, I know. But when people use their big platform to go after—

No, it's not going after. I'm just saying that I don't— it's probably me, but I still have— I'm still having issues, it could be a lemon.

Okay. You know you wouldn't have got a lemon at Toyota of Orange.

All right, I really think we should just move on and then I'll get a text saying it's up.

Yeah, okay, great.

Okay, great.

Anyways, the ENT, uh, so, uh, you know, I was waking up ruminating, so I took a sleep test. That takes 3 days, then they tell you it's going to be 7 days for the results to go to your doctor. Well, of course, 7 days goes by, the doctor doesn't reach out, then 10 days end 12 days. All the while I'm having these ruminating dreams where I wake up and for 45 minutes I think about the fact that I refuse to go back to this place, yet I have to get the results. Like, what was the point of taking the test if I'm not going to get the results? But I'm also not going to go back there and spend 2 hours at the place to hear either I do or do not have sleep apnea.

Yeah.

So I have my general practitioner call and get the results. Of course, the results have been in there. Let's just start there. They never called to say the results are there. But when I have my GP call, they have them. But my GP is not a sleep expert. So he's like, I don't know, I'm looking at the results. It seems like you don't have it. And then I'm like, I need to know from the actual ENT.

Okay.

So then I call up the ENT and they're like, okay, yeah, let's schedule a time for you to come in and get the results. And I go, well, I said, listen, I'd rather not come in. I live in Los Feliz. Also, last time I was there, it was a couple of hours. And so if there's a way we could do it over the phone, I would prefer that. And then they're like, well, I can ask. Really hem-hawing about that, but they commit to that.

Okay.

So we commit to them calling me for a telehealth appointment at 2:45 PM on Wednesday.

Okay.

2:45 comes around, wait for my call. I got my focus on, I got my ringer on, blah, blah, blah. They called at 3:54.

Oh my God.

They were an hour and 9 minutes late for the fucking telehealth.

Very frustrating.

So then I start talking to them. Oh, I'm sorry we're late. blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, but is it still an option? Can I get on the phone with him? Yeah, let me see, blah, blah, blah. So then the guy gets on the phone, he's like, hey, yeah, I'm looking at this and you don't have sleep apnea. And I go, okay, great. I said, look, I want to say this with love and respect, and I saw your waiting room, it's totally full. You don't need to worry about me. But I need to point out, I came to your office and sat in an exam room for an hour before you came in, and then you took an hour to give me a 5-minute I said, today you were supposed to call at 2:45. You called at 3:54. I said, I'm just going to suggest that your scheduling department probably needs a little work.

Okay.

And he goes, you're right. You should be mad. I'm mad.

Oh.

Yeah. You shouldn't have to wait for 2 hours and we shouldn't be an hour. I'm mad at— you know what I'm mad at myself. I kept saying, don't I have something at 2? No, he 180s and goes, I kept saying, don't I have something Oh, he's turning on everyone else. He says it was his fault, but then he immediately says that he had been saying, don't I have a 2:45? I don't believe at all he ever said, do I have a 2:45? If he's the doctor there. And then it became this hilarious thing where now I'm comforting him. I go, look, it's fine. Everything's fine.

I love you. I'm coming back. I'm on my way.

I got— but I'm taking this FedEx package right now. It was definitely that situation. But then I was just stuck on the phone. I was on the phone with him while he said it was his fault, but then also said he tried to talk to me at 2:45 and no one would let him. It was so crazy. Wow.

I had—

I wanted— why I would've never said is like, it's time to retire.

Oh my Lord. Okay.

He is very, very old. Okay. And the nonsensical loop about him being at fault, but also he tried to call me, which is insane. It was wild.

I want to say something, but I'm nervous you're going to make it— I don't want to fight.

Okay. I don't either.

I really don't want to fight. I

don't like to fight.

Me either. And we're not going to. But I do want to bring something up.

Yeah.

Like 3 minutes ago, before you told this story that I want to hear, I loved it. You were like, don't complain about a business.

Yeah.

A business.

Yeah. So I didn't say his name. That's the huge distinction. I am not outing anybody, and I'm not trying to get anyone's business to go on It's totally different. This is just an anonymous ENT. I've been so conscious of not doing that because I won't do it. Look, I have flights sometimes that make me so angry, and I want to come on here and say it, and I don't ever do it.

I

don't ever blast the company. And I'm really mad at a lot of companies a lot of the time.

Okay, well, I didn't say the company. You inferred. the company.

As you held the phone up to the camera.

I didn't say.

Okay.

And I don't think it's the company's fault necessarily. I just think the device I currently am holding, something's wrong with it. Yeah. Because I went with another friend to get her phone at the same time and she's not having these issues.

No problems.

So it could be a lemon.

Uh-huh.

And it's an iPhone. unnamed company that made this phone.

But you were holding the product. Listen, what about holding the auntie's business card up to the camera and I go, I never said his name.

I'm never gonna— I'm, by the way, I'm never stopping buying these phones or these companies' products. Unnamed company. Um, so yeah, okay. Now, I agree.

What happened with Kelly Clarkson? Can you— do you know all the deets? I do. I don't. I saw I saw that there was a video I could watch. I know. But I didn't have time to do that.

I haven't actually watched the vid, but I have heard about it. Um, I, I for some reason kind of love this story, and I think it's because the world— my al— I need to clean out my algorithm.

Okay, you need to cleanse.

It is so depressing right now. And not even just like the world is depressing, right? Yes. Geopolitically, politically, it's a mess.

Inflation's through the goddamn roof.

Everything's bad. But really, I'm getting like this horrible story about the man that fell off the roller coaster who's a dad. Then I'm getting personal stories that really feel heavy on my heart.

Yeah.

So this story

was light.

Feels light to me.

Yeah, it's inconsequential. Well, it could be consequential to the proprietor, but if I know the details at all.

Yeah, well, exactly. That seems to be—

I don't even know.

Okay, so this is what happened from what I gleaned. Kelly Clarkson went into a store in Brooklyn, like a small—

Trinkets shop.

Small business. Yeah, there was trinkets, but I think they do like kids' shows there and it's like a fun part of Brooklyn. And she went in and she wanted to purchase an animatronic—

Owl or something?

Yeah, bird.

Oh, wow. Rob's got an actual photo of it.

Named Molly. That bird is named Molly.

Wow. You really know this story inside and out. Okay, so that was hanging on the wall at this Brooklyn joint.

Yes. And she—

And it's not for sale, or is it for sale?

Well, okay, pause. So she wanted to buy it. And according to her, she was Pretty Woman'd there. was $15,000. You can't— like, you would not be able to buy it. It's $15,000, but we can help you look for something similar or like something cheaper or something, according to her. And then she's Pretty Woman, big mistake, huge. And then she called them out, the name of the—

On her daytime show too. It was actually on Twitter. Oh, it was on Twitter. Okay.

Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so

that's still a thing. That's still exactly a platform.

Interesting that she's still using that platform, but a little bit incriminating. But continue. She basically says, if you want to feel Pretty Woman, go to— and then they responded.

Great. What'd they say?

And they basically said, Molly is a fixture in this store. She's not for sale.

Boom.

And we said, this, but, and then she responded. She said, no, that is not what happened. So it is a little— She said, she said. It is. It's a Molly said, Kelly said. It is. She said, she said. And, um, listen, overall, I agree with you that if you are someone of means—

If you have an enormous megaphone.

Yes. You should not call out this small business specifically. I do think you're entitled to complain. You're entitled to tell that story. I do think saying specifically the store's name—

Yeah.

bridge too far.

Really quick, you also are trusting your perspective a little too much. There's a little bit of lack of humility. Well, that's why there's a video. Certainty of what happened to the degree that you'll, you know, attack.

She might, but that's also why it's like, I don't— she's not someone who gets into these things, so it's not like— I think she really remembers it that way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think probably it did happen that way. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know I wasn't there, okay? And I didn't watch the video. Yeah. But—

What do we think happens in the video?

I think you see them talking. Exactly. I don't even know. Is there audio? I don't know.

Robert, find out if there's audio.

Okay. But, you know, of course it made me do some introspection.

Uh-huh. Sure. 'Cause I've done this. 'Cause you feel Pretty Woman'd a lot.

Not a lot. Twice. I've talked about it twice.

Okay.

And one time was a small business and I did not name

it. Yeah.

So I feel good about that.

Okay.

The other time was Chanel.

Uh-huh.

And I feel fine about that. I do. I feel fine about calling that out because actually my beef was not with Chanel. It was with a person and I did not name him.

Okay.

And I don't know his name, so I can't name

him. Right. Unfortunately.

But it did make me think. I was like, yeah, I mean, I mean, are you allowed to complain? Are you not? And then I was like, I mean, on your podcast, you can kind of complain. You can do what you want as long as—

I think you should complain, but I don't think you should ever hurt anyone.

I agree.

I think that has to be a principle you have.

I agree.

Even if the guy was an asshole, he might have been an asshole that day and he's a great guy otherwise. Yeah. Like, if you catch someone in the worst moment in your life and then you broadcast on a very large megaphone, this assessment of a person in this one interaction.

Yeah.

Also doesn't feel terribly fair.

Sure. But these are experiences people have in life and they want to share them.

Excluding you, I have a few people in my life where almost every interaction I hear about with them,

yeah,

someone's always dismissing them.

Right. No, I know that's bad. And so I don't feel that way.

I don't think we can trust ourselves so much.

I know. You remember that when I went the C-word store. I was with a friend who— I was ready to write that experience off.

Yeah, she was the one who was on your behalf.

She was

like, nope, that was bad.

She's like, that was bad. But mainly that story was to indicate, like, you can't tell who has money anymore.

That's true.

And so you just should be careful. It's a cautionary tale. You should be careful if you're working in a biz to— it is definitely one thing if something's not for sale. Like, I think— Exactly. Yeah, that's it.

That's why if you come to my house and you say you like my TV and then I don't sell to you, like, I don't know.

But maybe this guy who she was talking to, or woman, I don't know, forgot that part. Maybe they just said, oh, whatever, and then the store is like, oh, it's not for sale, and she's like, well, no one told me that.

Yeah, who knows?

It's security footage, so there's no audio.

So yeah, so what are we gonna get from that?

released it, so they must feel pretty confident it, it exonerates them, right? I mean, she didn't release the security footage.

I know, but like, it doesn't do anything if we—

Also kind of a win for them. I bet they're huge now.

Well, that's the thing.

I bet everyone went in there and bought every trinket they had.

They are saying like people are mad, but then I do think they're getting a lot of business. So I mean, ultimately she probably did have a favor.

Yeah, apparently the bird is is up for sale for $15 million now.

$15 million?

Yeah.

Oh shit, don't tell Monica that.

Wait, now they put it up for sale now?

Yeah, for $15 million.

That's okay, but now I think that's rude.

What if she bought it?

Yeah, she should.

And she goes, big mistake. But they're like, okay.

No, now I'm on her side.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

There was also one that was viral that was like Sandler's daughter, but then he went in there and bought everything for her, and I'm like, didn't they get rewarded?

I haven't heard that one.

You don't remember that one? It was so popular like a summer ago or something.

Oh,

it's really funny too, if you break down the Pretty Woman Yeah,

let's do it.

I mean, this is dangerous.

Let's do it.

She was a broke prostitute. I mean—

But in that moment, she had the means.

She had his credit card.

She wasn't walking in the store as someone who couldn't afford. As a low-key. Yeah, she was there to buy stuff. But

it's just funny what it represents to us. It's like, well, in truth, just the reality was she can't go to that store and buy stuff.

You don't know. That's the whole— that's literally the whole point. is classic don't judge a book by its cover. You have no idea. You have no idea. And they didn't have any idea

that she had met

this guy. They didn't know that she was flush with cash.

Yeah. So if a homeless dude rolls in holding his sleeping bag, he has no money to buy anything in the store. Are they obligated to take everything out of inventory and let him try every single thing on so that he then at the end of it can be like, all right, peace, I have no money? That— we gotta be somewhat realistic about, um, life.

If he doesn't have mental health issues.

He should be—

I think he has to be. No.

How about this? Is there any responsibility on the person who cannot afford the shit to be in there making people work around them and accommodate them when they can't buy anything? Is that a right human beings have?

I, I— no, I think you're allowed to walk in. No, I think you are allowed to walk in any store you want.

And have the people spend all their energy and time and accommodating you when you can't buy Anything.

It's not their time. It's their job. That's literally their job.

So when I was 18, I had no money and I went to the Ferrari dealership. Should they have let me do a test drive?

Yeah. They don't know. They don't know, Dax. And by the way, they really don't know. You in the future could and did have the means to do that. So you have no idea what you're putting—

I'm just saying, you, your own personal responsibility. I would be a shithead to go waste A salesman's hour of their life, take on the liability of having me drive this expensive car that I can't replace if I smash it on the ride. Like, I'm asking all these people to do all this shit because I want to experience this Ferrari for a half hour, but I can't buy one. Where's my personal responsibility?

I mean, I

guess I'm just entitled to drive a Ferrari because I want to.

Well, if it is the rule that you can— I don't know about car dealerships. I don't know if you can walk in and do that or if you have to make an appointment.

If I walk in right now and ask to test drive a Ferrari, they'll let me.

Yeah, but can anyone?

Because I can buy one, all right? And I can replace it if I destroy it on the test drive.

But can you— can anyone like do that? I mean, you erase you because there's so many elements to that, but like normally for a test drive, don't you have to kind of like make an appointment or something?

No.

You can just walk in?

No, you can walk into a dealer right now and go to Toyota and say, I like this car, can I test drive it. And I think personally, I think some personal decency would be if you can't buy the car, you shouldn't make these people whose job it is to spend their limited 8 hours in trying to sell them— that's— I don't think that's cool of you.

But how do we get onto this? Because the whole point is that you can.

I'm saying this whole thing we have, the Pretty Woman thing, is based on this thing that it would be so offensive that they didn't assume she

Well, I guess yes, but based on exactly— I kind of think what you're saying, which is for the other person who's being Pretty Woman'd, they're going into the store. First of all, I totally disagree that you can't go if you don't have maybe the means to buy a Celine purse, that you can't go into Celine and go look at them. I think you can look at them.

I think you can look at them. I think when you're asking the employees there to give you their time and resources to go pull merchandise and let you try on different things, No.

Well, also no, because like there are times I go into a store— I mean, rarely and unfortunately— that I go into a store and I pick out a lot of things to try on and then I don't get anything.

Yeah, but you, you could and would have.

I know, but

it wasn't a waste of their time.

It was. They didn't get anything from that. They got zero.

There was a potential for a sale. If you don't have any money, there is no potential. You're just entertaining a human being who wants to try on pretty clothes, and I don't think someone's just entitled.

You don't know anything about their life. They might have a rich mom who might buy them that for Christmas. You don't know. And so you just—

No, I'm trying to give you an example we know. Is it ethical for someone who cannot buy the thing to make a bunch of people run around and grab samples for them and try stuff on if they can't buy it?

I mean,

I'd say no.

I personally—

It's the same as going into a restaurant and having the chef make you a huge meal, and then you go, oh, I can't pay for it.

That's not that at all. You cannot go to a restaurant and not pay.

Well, the labor of a salesperson is getting you the things and watching you try them on and getting you different sizes. That's the chef.

But no, you can't go into a restaurant and not pay. That's illegal. It's not a labor.

No, you order and then it comes and then you go, oh, you know what? I don't have any money.

You can't do that.

I know you can't do that. They've already made it. I know you can't do that. This is very analogous because you've just gobbled up people's time.

That's not why you can't do it. You're not— you can't not do it because you just wasted people's time.

I'm saying that's why it's morally wrong.

Well, it's morally wrong because— no, I don't, I don't agree. As also someone who like

used to go try on a lot of stuff they couldn't afford.

Yeah, first of all, I thought I wasn't even gonna say that, but yes. Like, also when I worked at SoulCycle, people come in all the time, they're trying on the clothes, they're asking for sizes. I, I do that. Yeah, they're not obligated to buy anything.

That's not the point. If they couldn't possibly afford anything—

I don't know if they can. That's my whole point.

I know. I'm asking you to give a verdict on whether you think it's morally right to go make somebody waste all that time when you know you can't buy it.

I just don't think it's a waste. So I do not think it's morally wrong.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't. Um, because you might buy that later, or someone might buy it for you, or you might come across $20,000 on the street and go right back in. I, I don't think it's a waste. And I definitely, as just some— as someone who works, I'm just like, if you work in retail, yeah, that is your job regardless of if it's a quote waste of your time. It's not a waste of your time. You have to be there for 5 hours.

It's an unwritten premise though, that they could buy it. You're not helping them to make them have a good day. You're helping them because the idea is they might buy it.

Yeah,

but if there's zero way they can buy it, then I do think you're kind of using up someone's time.

Well, their job is not— that's not their job. Their job isn't

to sell merchandise.

Well, depends, I guess, on the store, right? Like most stores you go into, they're not like, ooh, look at this. They're not selling you. You know,

everyone there's job is to sell the products in the retail store that they work at. Well, yes. No one's job is there to be like a social liaison to the community or be friends with people.

No, but they're normally at these places getting paid a fixed amount of money hourly. They're not getting commission. Commission potentially different. Okay. I, I could see that if someone's getting paid on commission and you go in and you are wasting their time completely when somebody else could also— there's someone else

standing there that can buy it,

that they could then make money though.

Well, even if for this business there's 5 people walk in and you got to spend 35 minutes on somebody that has no intention of buying anything, well, there's other— there's 4 other people that were gonna buy stuff. Well, I think that's a problem.

I think normally though there's other people. Like, you rarely see someone just like standing and not being helped in any of these circumstances.

I wouldn't know, I don't go shopping, so I'm gonna have to defer to your expertise.

Yeah, Norm, I, I've, I've rarely seen that. I just think it's a funny

thing that everyone thinks that they are entitled to have people go get them a bunch of stuff that they— if they can't buy it.

Yeah, that's just called shopping.

I think you should be able to have to buy it.

No.

Looking's one thing. Yeah, of course you can look.

Yeah, but looking is—

I'm not saying you're not allowed in a store, but it's when you're gobbling up someone's resources.

But gobbling up is, is a tricky thing to say because it either way, it's gobbling up if you don't buy it. It is.

It's just taking someone's time. Well, no, the employee doesn't have to allocate any of their attention or resources resources to you to be looking around the store. If you're making them get you sizes and run stuff to a dressing room, they can't be helping someone who would buy it.

I know, but I'm saying this happens 90% of the time people go shopping. You try on a bunch of things, you don't like any of it, and you leave.

Yes, but you could have.

But that's the part that we like—

That's a huge difference, whether you could have never anyway. So, you know, you're wasting this person's time. Like, you enter going, yeah, I'm gonna make this person run around the store, and I don't feel bad at all because I saw Pretty Woman. I don't know.

It's not because you saw Pretty Woman. It's because you wanted to try on the things and you want— some people, I mean, people go try on wedding dresses and stuff and they're not necessarily gonna buy it. Like, single people. I don't know if anyone does that, but I'm like, I actually, I do think some people try on wedding dresses.

People who try on wedding dresses are getting married.

No, some of them just want— I want to just go try some on.

Okay, I think you should pay that person that helps you if you're going to take 2 hours of someone's time.

I think you are kind of paying for those things.

Those are appointments. It takes 2 hours of someone's time to give you wedding dresses. Whatever. Oh, I never finished my thing. I've recently really got addicted to, um, getting, um, the Ralph Lauren Double R shirts.

Oh, that's what you're wearing right now?

Yeah. And I noticed, you know, I'm like, wow, I like their shirts. Maybe I should And then I got some pants.

Shopping.

And then I got 2 sweaters, not from them, but somewhere else. And I'm like, oh, I'm in a little phase. This is what I do. I'll shop for like 2 months and then not for 2 years.

Yeah. That's—

So I'm acquiring some stuff you'll be seeing for the next 2 solid years. Yeah.

I like what you're picking.

Okay.

Um, ding, ding, ding, shopping. And you should be able to go wherever you want and, um, try on whatever you want and leave it there. Um, you know, actually I will say sometimes I will go shopping I have the opposite problem. I'll go in, I'll ask for a lot of things to try on, and then I do feel guilty. I'm like, I guess I gotta kind of buy something. I've been in here and that's bad. You know, you should not spend money for no reason.

Yeah, I don't think you should. You go in there with good faith. If I'm trying to find something I'm gonna buy, and then if that doesn't work out, that's fine. That's good faith. You go in there and you're like, I owe $15,000, I can't buy a stick of gum, and I'm gonna make this person run around the store for 2 hours. I think it's a little— I understand what you're saying.

I don't think that happens.

Okay.

I just don't think that happens because in Pretty Woman, that's not what was happening. She was there to buy something for her event.

Yeah. I mean, the reason it is an urban— like, it has the stickiness of an urban legend is because it triggers our fear. Yeah. That people are dismissing us.

Yes, they do.

And that we're invisible.

Yep.

I think we have channeled that fear of being invisible or living in a class society into this event. And I think it brought a lot of power to this one event that I think if you really start poking at it—

What's it, that Kelly Clarkson?

No, Pretty Woman.

Oh, no, it was perfect.

I know it was perfect because it felt emblematic of a very universal fear that we will not be taken seriously.

Yeah, that people will dismiss you based on non-realities. Like, that's what it's like. Being misunderstood is really what it is. Because big mistake, huge is not like, oh, they think I— it's they think this thing that's wrong about me.

Well, hold on though. They're right about her.

No.

Monica, they were wrong about this extraordinary, never happens in real life scenario where the sex worker met up with a super wealthy guy who gave her the credit card to go shopping. One cannot account for the probability of that being the case.

Well, you must. That's the whole point. You must. You have no idea.

It's funny how much sense it makes to everybody.

Yeah, you'd have no idea. Again, back to what Maddie said. Who just met a very wealthy John? Huh?

You have no idea who just met a very wealthy John.

No, you have no idea anything about a person. You have no idea. You gotta treat people like—

Well, they were right up to the point where they didn't know she had met a John that was rich.

Dax, you are missing the point. Like, so deeply, it's crazy.

Okay. All right. It was so insane that happened last night. I return home with Lincoln. I've picked her up from rehearsal. And there is a man that's pulling into my driveway right as we're pulling in. And so we can't slash— maybe I could have gone around him to get in the gate, but also there's just a dude in a car and I don't wanna open the gate so some dude can drive in.

Yeah.

So I roll down the window and I go, hey, can I help you? And I'm in there with Lincoln and he goes, I'm looking for an address. And I go, oh, what's the address? He said 200. And I go, that's not this address. And he goes, he rolls up his window and he just sits there. Now we're sitting there, we're all sitting there, sitting there, sitting there. So I roll down the window, I go, hey, man, you're in my driveway.

Yeah.

And he goes, I don't care. And I am—

oh no,

you— can you imagine? I mean, it's at my home, right?

It's like triggering.

Of

course

it is triggering. I— and I am with Lincoln.

Oh,

and I'm just like, I can't do anything.

Okay,

you know, I'm also not gonna open the gate. This guy already seems fucking nuts. Yeah, there's no address anywhere in LA that's $200.

No, what does that even mean?

The streets are in the thousands. Like, what is he fucking talking about?

Yeah,

this goes on for long. I fucking signal him again, roll down the window. He won't roll down his window. He's sitting there, sitting there, sitting there. And then I get him somehow to roll down the window again, and I go, hey, man, you got to go somewhere else and wait because we got to get inside. And he goes, I don't care. And he rolls up the window. And so I was holding my phone up, but I wasn't filming him. I don't know what I was— I might have been looking at the doorbird or some shit. And then he rolls down his window. He goes, don't emailed me, and then he's clearly about to leave now.

Okay.

And I said, you are so lucky I'm with my daughter.

Yeah.

And he goes, oh, what are you going to do, Grandpa? Mind you, this guy, Monica, this guy looked at least 5 years older than me. He goes, oh, what are you going to do, Grandpa? And I go, what the fuck are you talking about? And then finally, now Lincoln's never on my side, right? If there's any dust up, she hates it, of course. But I've Playing it so cool. And Lincoln goes, how old do you think he is? You're not younger than him. She now gets involved.

Okay, good.

He goes, oh, he is 60 years old.

Oh my God, this is insane.

This is insane. He is 60 years old. And Lincoln goes, how old are you? And he goes, 27. Monica, this guy was at least 50. He goes, 27. And I go, then you need to go to a fucking doctor. And then he goes, you have cancer.

What?

This is all with Lincoln. And now what I love is now Lincoln is like with me, kind of, right?

Yeah. He's on your side.

It was insane. He was calling me grandpa. And I said, my daughter, I'm like, what? How do you— what do you think? This is my granddaughter? He's calling me grandpa. He said he was 27 months. It was insane. Then he said he was 27. And when he finally drove away, the amount I wanted to drop Lincoln in the driveway and go— it was the most amount of restraint I've had to apply in a very, very long Oh my

God.

And we went inside and it took me about 12 minutes to just handle that I didn't get to hurt her.

I'm proud of you.

And about an hour later, when I was not in jail and I hadn't broken my hand.

Yes.

And I wasn't getting sued.

Yes.

And I was thinking of Malcolm Gladwell and talking about how crimes we— murders we think are crime-related, they're not. They're arguments.

Crime's a And

I was like, oh, good. When I hear about how stupid people are, that they escalate, escalate, I'm judgmental of it. I know it's wrong. But then when I found myself in the situation, I was like, I cannot accept that this guy, he's been calling me Grandpa. He claims he's 27. He would not leave my driveway. He just got the best of the situation.

I mean, he's obviously an insane person.

But anyways, I was happy.

I don't think that guy should go in to be in the Ferrari store and be able to drive it.

I'm sure he would. Oh, you're not letting me drive because I'm 27, Grandpa?

Oh my God.

He said, you have cancer.

Did you consider— remember that? You have cancer is the craziest.

The enthusiasm, though, Lincoln had retelling Mom and Delta once we got in the house. It was an eventful night. Malcolm Gladwell. I love him so much.

Yeah, just the very best. One fact I caught that I never would've looked up. So, I started listening to his book immediately. Of course, I had been waiting and waiting. And it's great, obviously. But when he talks about the magazine that he would get—

Life?

It's Life. But he said Time.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

That's comforting.

That he messed that up?

'Cause his recall is so daunting.

I know.

That that's quite comforting, actually. No,

it's not the same magazine, but they are created by the same person and published by the same company.

Time Warner.

Probably, yeah. But Time is a news magazine and Life is a general interest photojournalism magazine.

So anywho.

Yeah,

I remember from his book it was Life, right? But he was thinking Time.

In the book, Life. In the interview, Time.

We'll never know which one it was.

Well, I bet it's Life.

Should I ask him?

Yeah, he might be mad that he's getting called out.

This is time sensitive, so I doubt you'll get back to me in time, but we're recording the fact check. And interestingly, in your book, you got Life magazine and you read it, but in the interview, you said it was Time magazine. And I'm inclined to think it was really Life. But now we realize we don't know whether we should believe the book or you, or was it both.

Might have to reissue the book if it's wrong in the book.

He need— you know what he needs to say? Whether whatever the truth is, he needs to say life.

Because it's in the book.

Yeah.

And he'll get sued.

Yep.

Yeah.

By us. Okay, I looked up how much American cops get paid versus other countries.

Mm-hmm. Um, they make pretty good money.

Yeah, it says American police officers are among the highest paid law enforcement professionals in the world. With a national median base salary of $76,210 per year, though total compensation frequently crosses $100,000 and above.

I think the name of the game in policing, much like union employment, is overtime.

Right.

So what's interesting is that then we get into another conundrum that could have come up in this conversation, which is like, we refuse to acknowledge how much policing we're going to need. So we end up having far too few officers that we end up having to pay overtime to. So we're paying a time and a half of what if we would just hire the right amount of people.

Yeah.

So it's another way that we're seemingly fiscally responsible, but really irresponsible.

Yeah, that makes sense. But it was confusing to me because I thought, well, maybe these other places have more because maybe they're paying them more and it draws more people.

Yeah.

But not the case. case.

Not the case.

Except Switzerland and Luxembourg do have a higher average.

Sure, Luxembourg.

Okay. Ooh, which writer's death in Manhattan prompted the Sullivan Act? It was David Graham Phillips, an investigative journalist shot and killed outside the Princeton Club in New York City by a mentally ill man named Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, who mistakenly believed the author had based a novel on his family.

Yeah, he got convinced because he would often write about high society and the scruples or the folly of that. And he got convinced one was about his sister, and he was from a very well-to-do family and bought an apartment directly across the street from him so he could watch him through the window. And then what's interesting about the Sullivan Act, which we didn't talk about, which is in the book is he then killed himself after he shot the novelist. And the point of the Sullivan Act was twofold in that suicide— it would've prevented a suicide and a murder.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oof, oof, oof. Oh, which of his books references the drop— ding, ding, ding. God, horrible ding, ding, ding— in suicide rates in England because of the oven gas? Town Gas. And that's Talking to Strangers, what we should know about the people we don't know. And that's it for facts.

That's it for facts.

Yeah.

Incredible book. Really, really great. I wasn't just saying that because he was in front of us. It's one of my faves.

And it's really, guys, it's short as hell. Yeah,

it's very entertaining.

But it moves really fast. But also it's 5 hours on audiobook. I decided to listen audio because Because that was, you know—

What he prefers.

Yeah. And he has music and stuff like that.

And the real interviews. And the people. As opposed to reading.

It's really good audio.

Yes.

Yeah. All right.

All right. Love you. Love you.