Latest / Revisionist History / Malcolm Gladwell Doesn't Mind Being Wrong | From Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know

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Malcolm Gladwell Doesn't Mind Being Wrong | From Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, I recently went on the podcast to
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: one of my very favorite comedians Asan Minaj, and we
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: had so much fun together, I thought we'd drop our
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: conversation into the revisionist history feed. My only regret is
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: that we didn't talk more about basketball, since he's a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: fanatic and I'm kind of a phanatic too. So have
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: me back Asan and we can correct the oversight. Here
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: you go, enjoy the conversation.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Last thing, and I don't know if you got your
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: pep and your step to do this, but you are
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: very famous for giving people blurbs on the back of
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: their book. Oh yeah, Now, first things first, what is
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: a blurb? Because it sounds like a slur that you
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: would hear in Harry Potter.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: You bloody blurb two cents three cents endorsement goes on
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the back of a book which says I read it,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I liked it. You should read it too.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Do you mind giving a blurb for this interview? Kim?
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're the master of blurb.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: I've seen your blurbs on many different books at.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Niz Hassan got me to cry. I wasn't expecting it.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting that to happen. Anyone who can make
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: their guests cry deserves a shout out. I would listen
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: to Hassan doesn't Know on a regular basis from now on.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: How are you prepared to be dazzled?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Pare to be dazzled?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe no other writer epitomizes popular nonfiction like Malcolm Gladwell.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: He literally made nonfiction popular. Millions and millions of people
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: have read his books, and that has gotten him in
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: trouble with two groups, one snobs who hate popular things,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: and two people impacted by some of the ideas that
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Malcolm Gladwell helped make popular. So I sat down with
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Malcolm to talk about the incredible new season of his podcast,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Provisionist History and the profound impact that it had on him.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: We shook me why his books have had such a
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: wide appeal.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: What my books do is allow you to play with
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the world of ideas.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: And we get into his hot take on working from home.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I'll never live that one down.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: I also asked him about that Blink cameo and White lotus.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Was it a compliment or a snake diss? I mean,
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Mike White, what are you doing here? Are you coming from?
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: My boy?
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Malcolm, and more importantly, are you casting me in season
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: four or what? Because I am available? Do you prefer
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: writing books or do you prefer podcasting?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Well? I like them both because it's so different. It's
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: like saying, do you prefer chicken to shrimp? I mean,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I like them both, but there are hard to compare
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: because there's things you want to do with podcasting that
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: you can't do with writing, and vice versa. The thing
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I got tired of in writing books, I'm tired of
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: it was too strong a word, but I wanted to
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: get away from was I didn't like the insistence of
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: my own voice. So the thing that's lovely about podcasting
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: is or the kind of narrative audio storytelling that I do,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: is that I get to recede and what I'm doing
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: is collecting other people's voices.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, your books have permeated culture in a way
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: that is so It's so Hudson News Stand deep Like,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: there is not a year that I have traveled where
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I have not seen a Malcolm Gladwell book at an
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: airport in the United States of America. Did you see
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: the cameo of Blink You on season one of White Lotus?
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, how'd you feel about that?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Shane was reading it. This is a moment.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I did love that. I love that show.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: How did you feel about the way Mike White described
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: this moment? So this is what Mike White said about it.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Blink just felt like such a Norman book. It seems
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: like he's stoking his curiosity, but it hasn't gone very deep.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Gladwell's the kind of writer that makes you feel smart
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: while you're reading it, whether you are or aren't.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love that. That's a very sweet thing to say.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Don't you think some people think of this as a desk.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: I don't think.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: I see this as a compliment. So he was writing that, like,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: that's why Shane is reading the book in it. But
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: I think I'm like, hey, you create egalitarian, accessible stories
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: that people can read.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's but it's I think if I maybe
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: reading too deeply into that. But the way I would
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: phrase it is most people, as part of their daily lives,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: don't have a chance to engage in the world of ideas.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: People's lives are full, they have kids, jobs, responsibilities. They're
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: not reading the Journal of the American Sociological Society at
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: night right, or they're not getting exposed to the latest
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: theory about this or that and the other. There's no
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: place for it. They don't and so they don't get them.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: They don't get a chance to quote unquote, if feeling
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: smart means being able to play in the world of ideas,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: they have limited opportunities for that. What my books do
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: is allow you to play with the world of ideas.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I say, I'll go out and find cool ideas for you,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: arrange them, let you just indulge in them, see whether
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: you like them, try them on for size, reject them
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: if you want like. And that's the thing. The books
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: have been successful because people have a They recognize the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: fact that once you leave college, you don't have easy
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: access to right.
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  Speaker 2: Right yeah, yeah, just hours and hours of kind of free, open,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: guided time to explore big ideas, explore big ideas.
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  Speaker 1: I have the luxury of doing that for others, and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that I think is a I think of that as
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: a noble calling.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: How do you feel when people put what you do
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: on this huge pedestal that you go these Malcolm Gladwell
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  Speaker 2: books are these seminal books for intellectualism.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Do you feel like that's too big?
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Of a title because I had this with with my
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Netflix show as well with Patriot Act. People feel like
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: these enfotainment shows are the same thing as being deep experts.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Like if you watch Patriot Act and you see our
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: episode about fentanyl, you're not a fentanyl expert. I'm not
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: a fentanyl expert. Like I'm literally reading off a prompter
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: and I learned about this like a month and a
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: half ago.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think I do think that's too much,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: But I think what to the extent that what people
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: are doing when they say that is expressing their enthusiasm.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I'm happy because what they're what they're really saying is wow,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I got to play in this world of ideas and
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: it is way more fun than I thought. That's cool,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: That's what they're saying. Yeah, and they don't, and you're
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: capturing that a moment in time, because usually what happens
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: then is they feel emboldened to go on on their
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: own and discover other stuff. And so the moment when
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: they think that, you know, Outliers, was the be all
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: end all, it passes because they then start to discover
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: on their own other ideas that complement their understanding of
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the world and they fall in love with some other thing.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I'm the gateway drug. I'm not. I'm not the addiction.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Is is your dream that it gets them on a
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: path to being Like I need to access scientific research.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: But I want to be the first thing. I want
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: to be the first thing you read, not the last
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: thing you read on that subject.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: I think one of your greatest gifts is probably your
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: gift and ability to passionately tell a story. I feel
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: like you could tell a story literally about anything and
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: get me engaged, Like could you do a revisionist history
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: about W twos and W nine's.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Like how would you attack that?
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Like give us a little bit of that Gladwell juice
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: of Like how do you take these very mundane topics
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  Speaker 2: and make them super duper interesting.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: You know, that's a tough one. I have to look
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: into it a little bit. I've been doing this a
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: version of this right now because I've been working on
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: this project about American gun violence, and i want to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: tell a story about American gun violence and not talk
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: about guns, not at all. You got to talk about
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: kinds of sumptions. I'm interested in exploring all the all
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the peculiarities of the way America and think about gun
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: violence that have that aren't the ones we normally think about.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And so there's one. There's one where I do an
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: entire chapter on the Second Amendment, which is all about
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: this is the grammar of the Second Amendment and understanding
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century if you wrote a sentence like that,
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  Speaker 1: which is it's a sentence that begins with an absolute
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  Speaker 1: clause and then has the operative clause, and the absolute
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: clause is what's called it an initial being clause. Particular
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  Speaker 1: kind of absolute clause, and initial being clauses loom really
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  Speaker 1: large in the grammar of the eighteenth century in a
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  Speaker 1: way they don't now. And so the whole thing is
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: all about eighteenth century grammar. And it is like, I
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: don't know if I pulled it off because no one
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: else has read it. It's a draft, no one else
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: has read it.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: But this, essentially, this is like a funk masterflex. Can
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: we get a bomb on this? Can we get a
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: bomb drop a hot ninety something bomb drop on this?
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: This could be the next this could be the exclusive,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: This is your jay Z hot ninety something, this, this
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: is me, this is this could be the next book.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Well, this is a chap during the next book, Well.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Just drop a bomb on a flex. Go ahead, did
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: a bomb? Just drop We're gonna do it in a post.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, but it's possible. I did not succeed in this,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: But I got so deep into eighteenth century grammar. And
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: what's interesting about it is that you realize the whole
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: point of going on this incredibly nerdy grammatical path is
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: to make you understand that when the Supreme Court passes
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: opinions on the Second Amendment, they are making shit up.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: They have no clue what they're talking about, and anyone
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: who knows what they're talking about is like, oh my god,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: this is nuts. To pass a ruling about gun rights
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: based on our understanding of the Second Amendment requires it
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: to interpret the Second Amendment because it's a sentence that
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: actually makes no sense. It's a pre modern sentence. It's
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: like not a sentence we'd ever write today, right, And
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: they presume to interpret the sentence without knowing any thing
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: about linguistics, in particular, without learning anything about historical linguistics.
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  Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. You can't read a sentence from seventeen eighty
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  Speaker 1: three or whatever it was in as as someone living
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five and makes sense of it. You've
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: got to talk to people who knew what the way
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: people phrase things. In seventeen eighty three got it right.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And they didn't do that. They just thought, oh, I
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: can pull out Websters the Dictionary off the shelf and
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: just tell you what the words mean.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: This is.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: If you did this for a paper in college, you
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: would get a C minus.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: You are very good at coining particular terms that catch
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: like wildfire, tipping point for example, obviously your super popular
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: book that came out in two thousand, Tipping Point. I
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: read it, many people read it. What is it about
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: certain terms that make them just catch on like wildfire?
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Like I'll give an example.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: You know the.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Term bucket list? Okay, that term came from this movie.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: There was a movie called The bucket List with Jack
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Nicholson and more startment with it starts with this.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: It was not used.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: It does not pre date this movie. Yeah, like in
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: social lexicon, it's not crazy. But my question is is
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: how do you know that something is going to catch
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: like that?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: You don't, I mean, how could you know? I mean
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: you can, you can. It can sound good.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: To you, but but picking a title is pretty big,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: like picking a title.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: You know this.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: You're sitting with this PDF, you're reviewing it, you're revising it.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: It's like naming an album.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: You go, okay, this is this is the phrase.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I mean. I have a theory about what a title,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: what the perfect title is, although none of my books
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: have ever had the perfect title. The perfect title is
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: a oxymoron. So there has to be some tension between
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the two kind of operative words in the title. So
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the famous environmental book for the sixties, Silent Spring, is
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: to my mind, to perfect title. Silent and spring are
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: in opposition to each other, Right, it's an oxymoron. No
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Spring is silent, and she's giving us she's that with
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: two words, we instantly know that there's stakes, something has
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: been right. She's taken two very very very sure, familiar
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: simple words, and by pairing them has just created this
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: whole understanding of what's going on. Right, So I've always
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: That's what I've always strived for. The title of my podcast,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Revision's History is not quite that, but it's a it is.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: The tension is that that term is something that's usually
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: used as a term of disparagement, and so I am
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: suggesting that something that's usually disparaging is actually worth listening to.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Can you help me coin some terms these things that
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I've been feeling. As a comedian, I use comedy as
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: a way to, in a healthy way, chance all my
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: add and internal feelings into something that is useful and
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: possibly provides people joy and comfort. Can you help me
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: come up with a term that describes the urge that
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: men above forty have to want to engage in devour history,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: you know how, like dads who are forty four years
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: old and they're like, I'm super into Ken Burns. Now,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: what is that.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So true?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, the bad term I have is dad stalgia.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: But that like that, it's not it's not singing. It's
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: not singing, baby, help me make it sing. You know
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: what I'm talking about.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. It never occurred
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to me till now. It makes me happy that you
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: have identified this thing and you're what's right about this
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: is that it is absolutely the case that like there's
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: a moment when they're all the species of dad. It's
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: like there's suddenly it's all about General Patton.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: It's a species of dude. Yes, it is a species
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: of heterosexual man.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Second, war is all.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: I'm going to keep giving you the exposition. Hopefully this
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: sparks something. I'm talking about A type of guy. See,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: here's what happens is in your childhood, your teens, your twenties,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: your thirties, you're like, how does the world work? Okay, shit,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: that will hurt me?
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: All right?
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: What is a bank account? Wells Fargo, got it? This
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: is a checkbook? Checks are stupid. This is a credit card,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Holy shit, interest rates are high. Finally got a job.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: This is how you talk to people. I think I'm awkward.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I should probably go to therapy. You do all these things.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Then you come of a certain age and you're like, whoa,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I kind of get the world and then you're like,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: how the fuck did we get here? And then you
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: dive into civil war by ken Burns, nineteen ninety.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: That's right, it's like, but also it's about then that
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: word what's that word?
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Because it is.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: You're also hearkening back to at the moment that you're
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: beginning to lose your grip on your own masculinity kind
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: of physical force, you're HARKing back to a time when
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: those were the things that mattered the most. Right, It's
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: like it's like, you know, it's Testoster gone. It's like
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: it's I don't know what to it is, but that's
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: part of it. It is longing for not just longing
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: for a lost era, but it's a longing for a
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: lost version of yourself. At the time when you could
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: no longer be a soldier, you are starting to sort
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: of indulge the stories and lives of soldiers. Right. You
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: don't do it when you're twenty five because you realize, oh,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that's me, like being slaughtered in the trenches or whatever.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: But when you're forty five or fifty, it's safe. It's like, oh, no,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't I wouldn't be called up if we went
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: to war. So now I can kind of I can
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: stay home and watch Saving Private Rhine for the third time.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm just like, I'm just still dwelling on Testospy. Okay,
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: let's move on to the next concept, because I don't
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: want to dwell on this. What I love about you
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: is that you are willing to be proven wrong, and
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: you talk about this in Revenge of the Tipping Point. Dude,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: your Ted talk was nuts. How did you feel about
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: that Ted talk where you basically were like my bad.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I know. The thing is, it's a flips that I
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: was saying earlier because I don't have it. Because I
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: get such delight in personal delight in finding out that
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: something I thought was one way is another. It never
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: occurs to me that there's any public cost to speaking
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: about that out loud. Right, It's like, it's fine, Like
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: and if you're someone who likes my writing, you're used
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to that, and you're you understand that what the game
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: we're playing here is we're playing in the world of ideas.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Ideas change, So we're gonna every now and again we're
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: going to pull up states.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: You know, I got to give you credit, man, It
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: was really it's very cool of you to say, hey,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I was wrong about this, yeah, and then also add
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: that into the blockchain because we also live in a
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: society where it's deny, deny, defend, deny, deny, deny die.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I don't understand this, because my understanding this is this,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: there's a whole series of cases where the perception of
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: people at the kind of who have public roles and
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the perception of the rest of society are completely at odds.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I honestly don't think the average American is at all
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: distressed to learn that an author whose books they've read
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: would stand up and say, you know what, that twenty
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: five years ago and I wrote about that change my mind.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I think I was wrong. I think most people are like, oh,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: that's great. You know why, because the common experience of
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: most people in the world is that you have to
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: change your mind all the time. Anyone who's had kids,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: all you do is change your positions. Used to be
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: you're going to bed at seven, then all of a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: sudden at seven thirty and you're forced to confront the
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: fact that the body of work that was devoted of
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: parental work, that was devoted to seven PM as a bedtime,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: has gone out the window, and like there's no going back. Yeah,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: that's it, right, So we're you like, but this there
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: continues to be this perception among people in the public
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: eye that if I do that, I'm somehow jeopardizing my credibility,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: which is so nonsensical to me. Why wouldn't it jeopardize
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: your credibility if you refuse to change your mind in
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the face of a rapidly changing world, Like that's credit
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: that someone who's like saying the same thing today as
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: they said twenty five years ago. That is a threat
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: to their credibility.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I think that is a byproduct of people saying, in
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: certain particular circles, you cannot say you're sorry. It will
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: fuck up with your credibility. That's because I think people
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: have noticed some of the most powerful people on planet
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Earth are psychopaths that do not apologize, and we live
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: in their ecosystem. The shrapnel of their ideas affect us. Yeah,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk, Donald Trump.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Et cetera.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Right, it's their ideas that they then push notification to
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: the entire world, and we have to deal with it.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I interview these two people to the most impressive
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: people I've ever met the other week Secretary of the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Air Force and former Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: So Secretary is a political appointe. Chief of staff runs
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the place. They knew each other. They were friends and
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: when they were both running the Air Force. There's a
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: mass shooter I forget where Oklahoma goes in and kills
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: twenty five people in like a church. They get a
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: call or in the morning that guy is an ex
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Air Force person, and then they get another call and
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: by the way, he was drummed out of the Air
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Force dishonorably for committing some kind of act of violence
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: involving a gun. And it was your responsibility to notify
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the FBI so that he would be on a list
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't allow him to buy a gun. And you
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: didn't do it right, Like shit, my institution screwed up,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: and as a result, this guy went out and killed
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: twenty five people. So they have a meeting, and everyone
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: in the meeting, all the top brass in Washington there,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: tells them go slow, let's work the South. There's maybe
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: a weigh, some loopholes. And they're like, no, we screwed up.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: We're gonna just hold a press conference and say we
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: screwed up. And so they go, they say we screwed up.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: They go towards Congress and they say, we blew it.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: We made a mistake, Like we've got to have better.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: We're going to find out all the people who are accountable.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: We're going to fix this thing.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: BA.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: And then there's a funeral for some of the people
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: killed by that shooter. And the guy who's the chief
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: of staff of the Air Force puts on his uniform,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: flies down to Texas, flies down to Texas and attends
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the funeral of the people who were killed because of
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: ant of an air by his institution. And I said
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: to him, Jesus, did you what did you think was
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: going to happen? I didn't know what was going to happen,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: but it was my responsibility to go. And I was
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: so it was so anithetical to everything about the way
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: public servants behave popular expectations in popular culture. And it
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: was two these two incredibly decent people who, by the way,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: they weren't personally responsible. It wasn't like they personally didn't
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: report it. It was like something they run an organization
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: with like one hundred thousand people. But they took responsibility.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: They took the heat before Congress. And then the guy
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: puts on his uniform and flies to Texas and goes
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: to the funeral and goes up to the guy who
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: just who was one guy there who lost six children,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: goes up and gives the guy a hug, right, just
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: like And.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: So you were blown away by the empathy, the humanity,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: and by the fact that he.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Didn't sure, he was not afraid to say I fucked up, right,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And he said, at the end of the day, they
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: were way better. They were way better off for doing that.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Said when they went to for Congress, everyone was expecting
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: them to deflect, deny, and delay. And when he said no, no,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: we screwed up as the first thing out of his mouth,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: He's like they were completely shocked, right, And it's like
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: sometimes the hardest thing is not just the best.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: And maybe it's so refreshing because people and especially adults
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: in corporate American in their day to day life, hear it.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Never hear that from those who are in power, from
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: their manager all the way up to the sitting politician.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Or beer do Why is it? I listened to that
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: story and I was like, how can you listen to
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: this story and still believe it's a good idea too?
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is such an inspiring thing that you're describing.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Just so our listeners are aware, Can you describe what
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: you talked about in Revenge of the Tipping Point and
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: in your ted talk in regards to the broken windows
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: theory that you had in two thousand book.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: In my twenty book twenty five years ago I made
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: I was trying to describe why crime fell in New
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: York City madically in the nineteen nineties, and I spent
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of time arguing that it was the result
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: of what was called broken windows policing, which was this
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: idea that relatively trivial signs of disorder are sent a
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: signal to would be criminals that behavior, misbehavior is possible.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: More than that almost welcomed, right, no one's in charge.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: That idea was then taken by the NAYPD, and that
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: was the basis for the stopp and frisk program, where
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the NAPD went out and over the course of many
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: years stopped hundreds of thousands of young black men on
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: a street looking for weapons. Because that was broken windows policing.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: It's like, all right, if we crack down on gun carrying,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: we'll send a message that people will I At the time,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: like many people in New York thought that stop and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: frisk was a really good idea. It's like, yeah, that's
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: a good extension of this idea. That's the way we
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: keep the crime rate down. A court stepped in and
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: threw out as unconstitutional stop and frisk policing, and YPD
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: went from stopping hundreds of millions of young black men
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: every year to almost none. And what happened, crime continued
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: to fall. So if you wrote it if you endorse
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: stop and frisk, and then you were suddenly faced with
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the empirical reality that once stop and frisk went away,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: things did not get worse, but rather better. You have
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: to re examine your position, right, got it? Wait, didn't
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: work the way I thought it was going to work.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: In my heart when I read that court case that
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: throughout stopping frisk, I'm forgetten. When it was two thousand
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and something, Like many New Yorkers, I was like, this
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: is the end. It's all coming back.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Oh you thought New York would turn into Gotham City.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. I thought the crime was coming back.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: And so did. I mean, if you read editorials in
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: all the papers in New York and early aughts when
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: that court decision went down, everybody was like glooming and dooming,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: We're bringing back the battle days. Didn't happen. The reverse happened.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Crime accelerate, the crime drop accelerated. So I just gave
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: a ted talk when my book came out, my last book,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Criben's a tipping point where I talk about this, where
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I just said I was wrong, you know, and I
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: have to take ownership of this. And here's the thing
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: that I have come to understand about that explanation I
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: gave of why crime fell in New York I was wrong.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I wrote a book that was read by a ton
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of people, millions of people in two thousand, arguing that
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the way to explain New York City's crime drop was
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: essentially some version of aggressive policing.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: How did you feel when you found out that, oh,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: the NYPD used your book as literary or intellectual justification
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: to stop in frisk.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I mean there were many I wasn't the sole source
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: of there, but it was a biography, right, Yeah, but
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: my book became part of this kind of zeitgeisty discussion,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: discussion about how aggressive policing was the way to cure crime.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, if I think back to that time, I
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: think I was flattered. How could you not be, because
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: we were in the middle of this extraordinary urban experiment
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: where Neil goes from being one of the most dangerous
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: big cities in the world to one of the safest.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And the idea that I was part of a movement
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: that kind of helped justify this crackdown on crime was
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: like made me feel good. And then find out oops, at.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: The end of the Ted talk, a woman comes on
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: stage and thanks you for your mea Kalpa, And then
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: you guys get into an interesting discussion about the way
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: your work was interpreted for Did you.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: Ever think about what if they got it wrong?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: What if it was wrong and innocent people were going
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: to have to experience this?
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: What were your thoughts about that back then?
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Well, I wasn't thinking about that.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: After that experien operience.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: How do you now see your work in the way
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: it's received by others? Do you want to put addendums
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: that hey, this could change or has it fundamentally how
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: has it changed the way you approach your work?
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Well, the over the course of my career, I think
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: one of the changes that I've made is I have
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: slowly come to the understanding that if you are going
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: to play this game with ideas, you have to not
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: temper your enthusiasm, but temper your certainty. You have to
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: make it clear that this is what we're talking about
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: right now, and that ideas, by their very nature are
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: based on evidence, and evidence changes, we learn more things.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Criminology is a great example. Criminology last twenty five years,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the feel of criminology has, I mean, so much has happened,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: We know so much more. I mean, we were in
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: retrospect primitives in two thousand. We know like that one
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: hundred years of advances and understanding have happened in the
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: last twenty five years. So we need to be remind
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: people this is a knowledge is a moving target, and
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I think I need to do I've realized I need
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: to do a better job of communicating that just because
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I'm saying this now doesn't mean it's going to be
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be saying the same thing a generation
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: now or five, or even next year.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: By the way, by the way, hey, I've been caught
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: in comedy crime before as well. Yeah, as a drifting charlatan.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: And I think the adjustment that I've made is you
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: have to lead with.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: That's what I make it very clear on our little
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: microphones here, just in case if anyone is using micro
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: content as a way or vessel to truth, I just
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: want to make it very clear that the title of
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: the show is awesome MANAJ doesn't know.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Don't get me started on what happened to you, which
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: I'm still angry about.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: No, don't.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Nothing is more tiresome than people who fact check stories.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: These are not like you weren't writing a history of
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: your life that was going to be published by Harvard
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: University Press.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: I was condensing many stories into seventy minutes.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: That's you're a performer, forgetness sake, do we forget what
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: a performer is like. Part of what's funny about comedians,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: like the universe of good comedians, is that when we
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: are listening to you, the thing that's that draws us
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: to you is is the idea that you guys have
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: a distorted lens like It's that's what we don't have.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: We don't have a distorted lens. We don't see the
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: comic possibilities in looking at the world from a slightly
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: different angle. And the delight we get from listening is, Oh,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: that person's not looking at something straight on. They have
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: this completely you know this surprising wacko. Never would have
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: thought about it in a million years perspective. That's the punchline.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: That's what a punchline is, sure right. So like to
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: sit to fact check a story like that is to
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: essentially undermine the very basis of what we want in
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: a comedian. And if you're getting your history from a
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: from a from a comics routine, then you're so intellectually impoverished.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I have no time for you.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Welcome, don't do this already put out I put out
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: a twenty three minute YouTube video about this.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: You can see it in the way below. But it's fine.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: It drives me crazy.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: So Malcolm, it's okay. I'm a race baiting Britain Charlatan.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: It's okay.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Meanwhile, you can you can.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: And then you can make funny You can make funny
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: jokes about it, and then you can sell out.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Any other people for who this stuff does matter get
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: a pass, okay, Right, the politicians who are telling bullshit stories,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: they're not comedians, right. I didn't vote for you to
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: look at the world from a forty five degree angles.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, Malcolm, you can put in comedy jail.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: It's fine. I guess that my sentence about this. I
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: do not want my comics to be like dryly relating
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the facts of the day.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: Okay, understood.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: You want your comics spicy, You want your comics line
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: to you, and that's okay. You know I got to
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: give it to you, though, But again, you and I
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: we love a hot take literally in your in you
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: know you have revenge of the tipping point and then
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: CBS Sunday Morning does a story on you.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: And you've got even more spicy takes. Let's take a look.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: You should never go to the best institution you get into.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: If you want to get a science and math degree,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: don't go to Harvard.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: This is nuts.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Well, no, that's part of a complicated argument from my
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: book David and Glythe which just says you should never
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: if you're interested in succeeding in an educational institution, you
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: never want to be in the bottom half of your class.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: It's too hard, So you should go to Harvard. If
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you think you can be in the top quarter of
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: your class at Harvard, that's fine, but don't go there.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: If you're going to be the bottom of a class,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: no doing stem. You're just going to drop out. You
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: just get it. Now.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: You're triggering me because I was pre mad and I
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: was in the bottom third of my class. They did
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: the whole thing. Look to your right, look to your left.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Two of you won't make it.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: You were one of those, was one of the two.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we don't have to get into this because
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: you're triggering me. But let me just say, Malcolm, if
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: you do get into Harvard, you gotta go to Harvard.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: You have to.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: You know, if my daughters knock on Wood get into
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Harvard and I don't think they're going to be in
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the top third of their class, I'm gonna say, don't go.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: It's too hard. It's crazy hard. Do you know how
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: smart those kids are? I know people who went to
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: like elite public high schools, like you know Stuyvesant in
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: New York. Yeah, and everyone in Stuvesant basically has an
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: IQ one hundred and eighty. So the dumbest person in
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: a math class in Stuyvesant can have an IQ of
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: one hundred and whatever seventy. So they think they're dumb
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: because you measure your that's how you measure your intelligence
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: by looking around the room. They're not dumb. They're in
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the top ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of humanity.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: But they are misled by the fact that they happen
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: to be in the most extraordinarily selective group of individuals
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: in the city of New York. Don't do that to yourself, or.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: You should, because I'll tell you why both Ted Cruise.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: Ted Cruse went to Harvard and then Donald Trump went
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: to Penn. So my point is is that there are
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: idiots that go to these institutions and if they can
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: spin it into a win, so can you. If you
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: get into Harvard, go take your shot of going to
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: the league, if you get drafted, if David Starting gives
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: you the call. I went to UC Davis, unfortunately. And
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: the crazy part is I got into UCLA, but I
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: didn't go I went to Davis instead.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: This is a longer story for another time. I got scared.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Your family's from Sacramento.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: With it, Sacramento Davis. I grew up in Davis and
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: I went to UC Davis.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: You got you do want to go to you?
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: I met I met my wife there and so so
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: it was the biggest bles all and it was wonderful.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: But you see Subercamp, It's.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: Like, Malcolm, I get it.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: What were you doing?
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: I know, I know, I got I got shook, I
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: got shund That is madness that I didn't go to UCLA. Yeah,
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: I know, I know. It is a regret.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Were you like an agg major? Like what were you is?
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: This is a pre major?
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: And I ran into somebody when I did my campus
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: visit that said, hey, stem at UCLA is really hard.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: You shouldn't go here.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see, so you're thinking, and.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: That's what got me to not go. Now, look again,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: I met the love of my life, the mother of
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: my children.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: At UC Davis. Let's take that reality to the side.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Everything else. UCLA the wooden center of the history Kareem
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: abdul Jabbar.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: And you're in the middle of last would I should
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: have gone?
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: And so, Malcolm, if you get a call from Adam
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Silver that says we're calling you up to be one
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: of the four hundred players to play in the league,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: you got to go to the league. And if you
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: can't cut it, fine, but you got to go to
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: the l Let's look at another one of your crazy,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: spicy takes that I don't know how you thought this
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: was cool.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: Let's take a look.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: It's not in your best interest to work at home.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: I know it's a hassle come to the office. But
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: like you know, if you work, if you're just sitting
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: life you want to live?
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: Is that the work life I want? Answer?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, so much trouble for that. I'll never leave that
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: one down. I can't believe you dredge that one up.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: It's one of the top videos of you, Malcolm, What
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: am I wearing? You're wearing like a great tea shirt.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: So the irony here is that you're telling people to
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: not be bums being their pajamas and work at home,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: and you're wearing a goddamn Haines tea Here.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Here's what I should have said. I should have said
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: two things, No, one thing. It depends who you are.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: If you're twenty five and you're trying to entering a
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: new field and trying to master it, you shouldn't be
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: at home. You got to go to the office because
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: you got to learn from other people. And it's way, way, way,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: way easier to learn from other people when you can
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: see them face to face. If you're fifty and you
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: got three kids at home, and you've got an hour
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: and a half commute, and you're really good at your
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: job and experienced, why are you coming in that makes
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: any sense? You can be way more productive at home.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Depends who you are. What I was reacting to, I
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: think in that was this widespread belief that every is
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: better off just working from home. I don't think that's true.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: I do think if I had worked from home in
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: my twenties, I would not be here. You would never
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: have heard of Malcolm Level.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Here's my subway take. I'm kareem now I have one
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: hundred percent disagree. I'm not here to tell anybody how
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: they should live their life. I used to work at
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Office Max for many years. I'm not trying to brag,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: but I wasn't a great employee, and I truly did
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: not care because my first name isn't Office and my
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: last name isn't Max. Whatever you can to do, you
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: protect your own, get the bag and take care of
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: your family, do your thing.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that yours is a bunch more evolved position
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: than mine, but I do. I was simply trying to
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: explain if you've never if you're young and you're trying to,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: like I said, master something complicated, it can be hard
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: to understand how much richer the learning experience is when
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: it's in a social setting, right, that's all, if you're
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: trying to be a journalist. So when I started out
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: in journal I got a job at the age of
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: twenty three at the Washington Post, and I was within
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: ten feet of four or five of the greatest journalists
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: of my generation. And I didn't know any about journalism.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: And I whorr you around? I mean, man, I.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Mean, among others, Bob Woodward was greatest investigative reporter of
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Was as far away from me as
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: you aren't. There was just a serious a guy named
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Steve call who was like a legend. There was a
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: guy next to me called Mike Kisikoff who was another legend.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: And I spent like six months, my first six months,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: almost doing nothing but sitting there and just eavesdropping and
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: like it was a masterclass all these things that I
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: didn't know. Idea, how to ask a question, how to
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: get how to interview someone who didn't want to be interviewed,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: how to frame idea, how to extreme I could go
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: on and on and on, how to process things on
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: the fly, how to write. I just watched them.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: You picked up a ton of game from these people
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: in person.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: And No, by the way, no athlete would ever say
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: you can master a sport by yourself. Every would They
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: would never say, oh, I got drafted by the Nickson.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Here's what I'm going to do to work from home
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: over the off season. No, they would never say that. Like, no,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: if Lebron wants to spend the off season by himself. Absolutely,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: he's the top of this game. But if you're a rookie,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: if you're nineteen and you just got drafted out of wherever,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Kansas State, No, you show up with your peers and
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: learn from them. That's what That's all I was saying.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's a I do not think that
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: it's a controversial take. And I was speaking from my
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: own personal experience because I had become aware, acutely aware,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: in later life just how much I learned in those
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: early years in journalists.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: You know, Malcolm, you were able to pick up game
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: from some legends at some great institutions.
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: But a lot of people who have jobs.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Their coworkers are a bunch of bums, and so they
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: just want to say, peace out, Carl, Yeah, I'm going home.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know. You're more of a cynic than me
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: on this. I actually think that if you're if you
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: are motivated, you can always find in any setting somebody
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: from whom you can learn. And that's part of That's
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: another thing that is useful about going in your early years,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: in going to the immersing yourself is making those kinds
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: of social calls, right, there's ten people around here, who's
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the one that matters and that I should be attaching
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: myself and learning from. That's a really, really important skill
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: that you can't learn by yourself.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: We've had an amazing conversation, but we haven't even gotten
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: to I think one of your best pieces of work.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about the podcast revision Is History. Yeah, Season eleven,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Ladies and Gentlemen. Season eleven of Revisionist History is about
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: the Alabama murders. Now that's the title of it, But
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: give give me the details of what launched this story
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: about this particular situation in Alabama.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: A friend of myn named Stephen I was talking to
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: about a year and a half ago when he goes,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I have a friend named Kate who has the most
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: interesting job in America. You should talk to her. I
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: was like, okay, And I did this thing which I've
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: started to do more and more and more, where I
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: find someone interesting and I just sit down with them
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: for as many hours as they can tolerate and just
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: talk to them with no agenda. So Kate was someone.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Kate Porterfield was this really extraordinary woman whose job it
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: was She's a trauma expert, and she started out by
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: treating people who've been started working at the Torture Clinic
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: of Bellevue, treating people who've been tortured around the world.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I'm this world renowned torture clinic there. Then she went
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: on and she spent a lot of time on Goodtnama
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Bay working with people who've been tortured by the CIA.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: And then she got involved in criminal cases, capital cases
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: where she was brought in by usually by the defense
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: in a death penalty case to try and understand the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: life and the trauma of the convicted killer. Right and
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: so incredibly interesting. So I sat down with her. We
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: met five times, each time for about three hours, and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: in the fourth time, fourth visit, fourth session, she started
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: talking about a case she had just finished working on
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: by a guy named Kenny Smith, and I was just floored.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, my god, that's what I want.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: So in our like twenty I was like, Oh, that's
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: what I want to talk about.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Kenny Smith was a guy from Florence, Alabama, in the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: north western corner of the state, who had been convicted
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight of murdering the wife of a preacher,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: and it was a murder for hire. And I'd been
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: sentenced to to death by in a state of Alabama,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: and I'd been living on death row for forty eight years.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: And she got involved in that case as just as
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Kenny was about to be executed, and so I just said, oh,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I wonder to tell that story. And it is the
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: most I think it's the best thing I've ever done.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: It was the most emotionally powerful thing I've ever done.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: We ended up doing seven episodes, We ended up expanding it,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: so Kate, who plays a central role in the story,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't even appear until episode five or six.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: Isn't it.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: It was two men that were two men, Yeah, another
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: guys as well. So the whole premise of this thing
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: is so interesting. It almost sounds like a prestige show
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: for FX, which is there's a wife, there's a husband,
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: there's a murder for hire. The men assault and beats
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: said wife, but then the husband kills the wife.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: We think, we think yeah, And then.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: It's specifically about the two men that were part of
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: this murder for hire that are then given the death sentence.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: And what's really fascinating about it is you think this
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: is almost like true crime, but it's actually an analysis
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: about how crazy Alabama judges are.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: Why are they so crazy?
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Well, why is Alabama crazy? I mean, Alabama is the
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: weirdest stay in the Union.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: I think that's.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Beyond dispute, also one of the most fascinating. I mean
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I say that I actually love Alabama. I go there.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: I've done so many stories there. I go there all
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: the time. I find it absolutely riveting place. The great
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: curse of the United States is of course, to the
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: legacy of slavery, which has persisted. That curse has lingered
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: longer in some parts of the country than others, and
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Alabama is a place that is still kind of struggling
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: under the weight of that legacy. Now, this case involves
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: everyone's white and in this case, so it's not explicitly
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: about the relationship being black and white people. But what
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: we're describing is a brutal and unfeeling system of punishment
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: that arises in response to the kind of racial realities
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: of the state. So we have this what we're documenting
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: in this series is the unrelenting, tireless, relentless desire on
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: the part of the state of Alabama to find a
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: way to murder these two guys, to execute these two
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: convicted murderers.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: What's so interesting about it is this is an analysis
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: on capital punishment. So the jury is actually against the
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: death sentence, the judge is for it. But just for
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: our audience before they dive into the season, can you
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: give me the history of capital punishment in America? What's
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: the history of capital punishment in the United States.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, so it's compared to our Western European peers, America
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: was very slow to kind of dial back capital punishment.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty big deal in this country up through
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the seventies. And then the Supreme Court says, We've looked
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: at the way capital punishment is being used in the
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: States and we think it clearly shows signs of racial
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: bias and arbitrary in US. You know, you get two
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: people convicted of the same crime, one's getting executed one tonight.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: You can't do that. You got to have some kind
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: of rigor. They put a pause on it on death pedally.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Public support for the death penalty plummets and people think
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: it's going away, and then it comes roaring back, not everywhere,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: but particularly in the South. And one of the states
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: in which it comes running back is Alabama. And Alabama
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: does this thing to ensure that they will to retain
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: their right to execute whoever they choose. They give the
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: judges what are called what is called override. So the
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: only one of the state in the Union that does
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: any remotely like this. But in the state of Alabama,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: if you are convicted of a crime and the jury
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: votes for life without parole and not the death penalty,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: if the judge wants it's not been change but for
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: many years, if the judge wanted to, the judge could
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: override the jury and just say, I know you wanted
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: life without parole, but I think this person should be killed.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: And which is like a really really weird thing where
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: they basically throw out.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: A judge basically gets to have a super veto on
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: a jury, which is nuts nuts. But have two questions
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: follow up questions. The first is is that up until
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: the seventies they were like, no, we cannot kill people,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: we are against the death penalty. What was it about
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court that lifted that band?
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: So everyone's doing it. The Supreme Court says stop, and
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: then the sweep got comes back a couple of years
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: later and says, you can proceed so long as you
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: ensure they're speaking to the states that there's some rigord
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: of the process. You gonna have standards you have to say,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: you know what.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: Other standards here.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: They're like, look, you can't the guillotines gotta go, we
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: can't have a firing squad. Some states, by the way,
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: have the firing squad.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, there's a big week. I didn't get into it,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: but I interviewed all these people about you know, one
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: of the standards is the method of punishment must be
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: neither cruel nor unusual. And so you get into these
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: big definitional things. Is is lethal injection, for example, cruel
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: And there's a big argument that it is because you suffer.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Actually you think you're not suffering lethal injection, you are,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Then the electric chair was clearly cruel. You did suffer.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: So there's a big argument. One of the reasons that
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: UTAH brings back the firing squad is that as an
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: argument that it's more humane than lethal injection. Actually, if
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I had to be executed, I would choose the firing
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: squad over lethal injection.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: It's that bad lethal injection.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about that in one of the episodes.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: So take me through the mechanics of lethal injection. How
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: does it work?
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: It's three drugs. It was dreamt up by this doctor
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma in the seventies on the back of an envelope.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: It's never been subjected to any kind of scientific protocol
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: or medical analysis. Is the random dude in response to
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: a request from the Oklahoma state legislature which wanted to
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: start putting prisoners down the same way they put down horses.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: And so the guy says, Okay, here's what you should do.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Give them a sedative like a barbituate, then hit them
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: with a paralytic that basically kind of freezes you. Yeah,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: and then hit them with potassium chloride, which will stop
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: their heart. I think basically this position is that should work.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, let's do that.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: And Reagan, funny enough, was a big proponent of.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Reg's proponent of it, and so lethal injection which spreads
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: throughout America and then throughout the world. So you know
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: in many countries now that have euthanasia legalized euthanasia, they're
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: using the lethal injection protocol. Well, we have a whole
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: episode of the podcast where this really brilliant anaesesiologist from
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Orlando named Joel Zivitt Barry does all these autopsies of
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: people who have been executed. He finds that their lungs
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: are filled with blood, frothy blood, and realizes what's happening
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: is that the barbituate that they get at the very
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: beginning is given in such a high dose that it's
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: turned their blood as acidic and it's burning up their lungs.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: So what happens is your lungs are on fire, which is,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: as you can imagine, quite painful because you've been giving
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: a paralytic you can't cry out in pain.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, the way you describe it in the podcast
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: is horrifying. This is the poll quote. The last thing
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: that you may know is that you're on fire from
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: the inside and the blood is filling up your lungs
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: as you die.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: It's nasty. The whole point of this is no one
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: who's involved in the death penalty game is even remotely
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: interested in trying to prove that this is a quote
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: unquote humane method of They don't you when Joel Zivitt
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: did the analysis of autopsies to figure out what was
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: going on with lethal injection. Lethal injection have been used
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: in American prisons for close to fifty years. So for
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: half a century we've been doing this, and no one
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: bothered in fifty years to ask the question of how
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: exactly lethal injection was doing its work. That's the level
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: of kind of moral callousness that we're talking about.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: It just felt like it was common knowledge when Reagan
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: was like, look, they use it on horses, but now
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: horses are people, so it'll be the same.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And we go into this in some detail, and
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: it's the most horrifying part of what is a very
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: long and horrifying story. It's just like nobody gives a shit.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Well, there's an interesting philosophical discussion to be had here
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: with I call them the revenge heads, the petty police.
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: There's two camps. There's one camp.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: That's like, there has to be a more humane way
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: to have justice and to understand that you cannot just
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: kill human beings. Then there are people that are like good, yeah, good.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of that.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: No, but for real yeah good yeah.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: There is that strong which I don't understand.
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: How do you react to that sentiment?
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: It seems peculiarly American, it seems peculiarly medieval. It's part
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: of this weird thing about this country. Which is that
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: we are simultaneously the most sophisticated country in the world
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: and also the least. The larger part of it about
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: this is that if you compare the US to say,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: Western Europe or parts of South Asia East Asia, that
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: we're very interested in the severity of punishment and they're
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: interested in the certainty of punishment. So if you think
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: about deterrence, about the attempt to dissuade someone from committing
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: a crime, the certainty of punishment, how likely are you
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: to get caught, the severity of punishment, how much you'll
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: suffer if once we catch you, and the celerity of punishment,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: how quickly it happens. In Europe, they are super focused
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: on certainty. If you murder someone in Europe, it's almost
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent certain you will get arrested or someone
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: will get arrested for that. Homicide certainly super high, but
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: they go really easy on severity. Prison sentences are fractions
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: a long. Most people don't go to prison. We do
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: the opposite. We have very low certainty the chances of
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: getting arrested for homicide in this country, or less than
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: fifty percent in parts in certain neighborhoods in this country.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: They're beholo on the South side of Chicago, it's like
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: fifteen percent. But if you get caught, you will throw
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: away the key. Right, So this is part of that
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: same dynamic. We've decided we're going to put all of
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: our eggs in the severity basket and make we want
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: to make punishment as horrifying as it sounds to try
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: and dissuade you from committing a crime. The Europeans said,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: that's don't put your emphasis there, put your emphasis on certainty.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: I happen to believe the European approach is far superior.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: Why do you think in America there is this obsession,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: particularly with the severity and the feeling of hey, look,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: if you kill these bad people. We're talking about criminals,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: we're talking about murderers. If you kill them, now you
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: just have good people left. Yeah, that was kind of
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: the conversation I had I had with different friends and
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: people at the office before you came in, Hey, how
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: do you feel about this? And there was again camp
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: of people that were like, this is barbaric. All of
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: this is barbaric. The Green Mile electric chair is barbaric. Yeah,
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: firing squad is barbaric. Lethal injection. This is nuts, it's
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: all crazy.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: I'm not with this. And then there's people that are like, yeah,
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: it'd be like.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Mind, this is a total digression. But my brother was
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: a principle in an elementary school and he was his
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: great struggle was ensuring the quality of his teachers, right,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: because it's a big difference. And he would always say,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: you cannot fire your way to a better school, meaning
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: that like you think your first thought is, oh, I'll
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: just get rid of my bad teachers and hire good ones,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: and he's like, doesn't worked that way. You can't you
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: If you're just getting rid of the bad ones and
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: quote unquote hiring good ones, you're not solving the problem
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: that made the bad teacher bad. Right. You have to
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: look at yourself and say, am I developing people properly?
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: Am I supporting them properly? Am I putting them in
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: the right place? Those are the questions you got to
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: start with. You can't just like go in there and
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: willingly get rid of me people. And I think there's
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: a version of that with that's what's not happening in
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: people who are obsessed with killing off murderers. They aren't
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: asking the harder question which is, well, it doesn't help.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: You're just going to if you don't solve the underlying
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: conditions that create this, you're just going to get another
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: crop taken your place.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: You have obviously a high level of empathy and curiosity,
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: and one of the ways that you showed that is
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: the way you end season eleven. There's this really powerful
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: moment where you speak to the therapist of the man
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: who was sentenced to death, and you do something that
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: is extremely rare in podcasting. You literally are quiet and
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: choked up and silent for a minute.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: Remember this is a medium where you have to keep yapping,
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: but you are so emotionally moved that you cannot even speak.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Why did you choose to end the podcast in this moment?
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Because we've been on this, I'm going to get an
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: emotion about it all over again. That doing that show
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: was the single most There are a very small number
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: of events that I've been a part of in my
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: life experiences that have shaken me emotionally. Death of my
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: father number one by far. I'll never get over that,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: birth of my children in a positive sense, doing that
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: show is like up there in the shook me, shook
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: me and still does it was incredibly hard to write,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: to report to like the number of times I found
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: myself after a conducting interview where I couldn't function for
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: the next like, and it seemed the most honest thing
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: to do at the end of the show to communicate
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: the fact that this tore me apart, right like, because
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: what I wanted to do was the whole idea was
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: it was a show about people who looked at these
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: two kids from this little town in northern Alabama who
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: do something insanely stupid when they're nineteen years old and
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: were written off by the state of Alabama and by
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: the rest of society, and the series of people come
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: and see in them some element of humanity, go to
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: the trouble of investing in these kids whose society has
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: thought were worthless and finding something of value in them
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: and learning how to love them, right And I mean,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: in one case, this guy we talked about, I think
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: episode three, this lawyer visited this guy in prison, drove
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: two hours each way once a month for twenty years
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: to visit this kid in prison, one of one of
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the murderers in prison, just to spend time with them,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: and that like, just throw me apart, right I just
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: it just and I needed at the end of that
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: of the of the show to kind of just to
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: tell people that, like, it's okay to like, it's okay
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: to to it, it's okay to feel it is okay
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: to open your heart to someone whose society, to someone
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: whose society's given up.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. Man, It's a
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: very powerful moment and something to think about. And it's
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: a very.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: What I thought was so amazing about It is a
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: very real thing that there are people. These two men
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: obviously did something wrong, but for you to explore the
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: complexity of despite the fact that people make mistakes and
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: do things that are horrible, we're still human beings and
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: we're some much more than what the state was thinking,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: where they would literally kill people from the inside as
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: if they were animals. Yeah, and so I just thought
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: that was a really powerful moment, And thank you for
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: sharing how those interviews moved you.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: Do you hope that it makes us as a society
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: more empathetic or it makes perhaps America reflect on our
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: own internal empathy.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: It's always it's always a hope with these things, you know,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: it's very difficult to measure the impact. But I think
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: all you can do is, like is just join the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: chorus right of people who are are insisting that we
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: be more human.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: I gotta somehow end on a positive note. We got
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: a button this thing?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: How do we do?
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know what I did bring us down to,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: not my ability to kind of like inject a down
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: or note to any room.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: It was a rare podcast moment and I think an
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: amazing counterweight to the never ending blabbering that we have
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: through laugh mics.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: It was just a really human, beautiful moment.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: And so, like I said, everyone, please listen to season
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: eleven of Revisionist History.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: Last thing.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: And I don't know if you you got your pep
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: and your step to do this, but you are very
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: famous for giving people blurbs on.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: The back of their book.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Now, first things first, what is a blurb?
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: Because it sounds like a slur that you hear, Harry Potter,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: you bloody blurb?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: Two?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Two cents? Three cents? Endorsement goes on the back of
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: a book which says I read it, I liked it.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: You should read it too.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: Do you mind giving a blurb for this interview here
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: you can.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're the master of blurb.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: I've seen your blurbs on many different books.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: At Hassan got me to cry. I wasn't expecting it.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: I expecting that to happen. Anyone who can make their
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: guests scry deserves a shout out. I would listen to
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Hassan doesn't know on a regular basis from now on, how.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: Are you prepare to be dazzled?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Prepared to be dazzled?
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: Can you also ad a parenthesis that I didn't bully
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: you into crying?
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: Holy rne away only lay No.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now's the
• 1:02:37
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• 1:02:42
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• 1:03:04
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