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Burden of Proof · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Before we begin, a warning this episode contains material that
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: may be upsetting to some listeners.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: What was tell me a little bit about what Owen
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: was like.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: When Owen was born, he was screaming and his neck
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: veins were out, and the doctor said, this is a Viking.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: And I think that's kind of the way he lived
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: a lot, you know, that kind of passion, So that's
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: the way he lived.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: The man speaking is Tom Thomas. He's sitting with his wife,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Kathy Brewerly.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: She's English.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Both she and Tom are United Church pastors. They met
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: when they were missionaries in Zambia. They have a son
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: named Morgan, and we're all at Morgan's house just outside
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: of Allentown, Pennsylvania, a bungalow in a tidy subdivision. There
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: are two little children running around at a big friendly
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: dog being big and friendly. Everyone has gathered to talk
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: about Owen, the Viking, the son and brother. Who isn't there.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: about Owen Thomas, a young man I never had the
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: chance to meet, about what happened to him, and why
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: we shouldn't forget about it. I went to see Owen's
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: family on a cold winter evening.
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: We knew that he was kind of feeling down, feeling
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: depressed in the last well, what would you say, last
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: month or so.
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: I didn't know that, well, I didn't know he was depressed.
• 2:19
  Speaker 6: I knew he was stressed.
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: He was stressed. He was stressed. School, fine classes.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Owen went full out all the time at everything. His
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: older brother Morgan, says he couldn't keep up.
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so we were sort of like opposites.
• 2:33
  Speaker 6: I was real good at giving like eighty seventy five percent,
• 2:37
  Speaker 6: and he was not everything. But just like for example,
• 2:40
  Speaker 6: school schooling, he would not take anything less than a plus,
• 2:44
  Speaker 6: a a minus.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: He was pissed as.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: But now we don't know if he was having difficulty
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: remembering things because we never even asked We never asked
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: him that, we never we never even thought that there
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: might be anything cognitive. We just thought this was a
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: somebody who's a tight, a person who's kind of like
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: demanding so much of himself.
• 3:06
  Speaker 6: In retrospect, I guess when things like this happened in retrospect,
• 3:10
  Speaker 6: you can always try to look back and say, oh,
• 3:11
  Speaker 6: I should have seen this, I should have seen that.
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: But the Sunday night he called, he really sounded depressed.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: Then he really did.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: And you know, now you.
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: Look back, we should have just gotten the car gone
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: right down.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: What did he talk about in that last car.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: Well, it was it'd be my birthday, so he was
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: his wishing me happy birthday. Anna. What did you talk
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: to you about, Tom? He said, I'm failing everything.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: That's what I say.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: When I said at the beginning that we shouldn't forget
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: about Owen Thomas, I'm talking about this, that we shouldn't
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: forget that. He went from clarity and purpose to failing everything.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen, I was invited to give a lecture
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: at the University of Pennsylvania Welcome.
• 4:09
  Speaker 7: It is my great pleasure on behalf of Penn's four
• 4:12
  Speaker 7: hundred and fifty Benjamin Franklin scholars to welcome you to
• 4:16
  Speaker 7: the twenty thirteen Benjamin Franklin Lectureship.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: The talk was at a big auditorium at the Penn Museum.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: I had been assigned a theme proof. That's obviously a
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: big topic. So I thought that this afternoon I would
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: start by asking a relatively simple question which is what
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: level of proof do we need about the harmfulness of
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: some activity before we act? I decided to tell the
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: story of a man named Frederick Hoffman, a remarkable man
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: born in eighteen sixty five in Germany immigrated to the
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: United States. Hoffmann rose to the position of senior statistician
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: at the Prudential Insurance Company. At the time, that was
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: a hugely important job. This was in the years before
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Social Security or Medicare. Private insurers were the safety net,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: and because they had to figure out what to charge
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: for life insurance premiums, they had to closely monitor the
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: health of Americans. And that was Hoffman's job. He set
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: out and he would cover the entire country and he
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: would go and visit towns and cities and villages all
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: across this land. And he would interview doctors and hospitals
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: and funeral directors, and he would visit all the major employers,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: and he would go to the cemeteries and he would
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: talk to people, and he would walk around the town
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: and he would try and get a sense of what
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: people are dying of. Hoffman was one of the first
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: people to sound the alarm about smoking. He was one
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: of the first to describe the terrible health conditions on
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Indian reservations, But perhaps his most important work concerned what
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: was known at the time as miners asthma. I give
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: a fair number of talks, and one of the things
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: that you can usually tell is if you've lost your audience.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: And I remember that day pen thinking that I had
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: no idea twenty minutes in I began to panic a
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: little because I'm going on and on about Hoffman, about
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: coal mining, about how big a deal coal was the
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: turn of the century, About how much dust the process
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: of coal mining created, About how coal miners would have
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: coughing fits and spit up this black, inky substance, and
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: they would cough more and more of it the more
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: they mined in the more time they spent in the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: coal mines. That was absolutely beyond question. The audience is
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: incredibly quiet, and I couldn't figure out if that was
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: because they found the subject as fascinating as I did,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: or if they were thinking what on earth. The thing
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: that no one could agree on was was that whether
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: that was dangerous? Did it harm the health of someone
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: to inhale all of this dust from coal mining miners?
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Asthma wasn't bothering the medical community and the mining companies.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: They said, look, miners have lower rates of tuberculosis than
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: everyone else. TB is a respiratory disease, so maybe cole
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: dust is protective in some way. Another argument was if
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: miners were coughing up dust particles, then their lungs were
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: functioning as they should. So for years and years and years,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: nobody paid particular attention to the problem of col dust
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: because they had all of these arguments that they used
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: to convince themselves that it wasn't a health risk. And
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: then along comes Frederick Hoffman. Prudential ensured a lot of miners,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: and if they're dying young, then that was a real
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: problem for Prudential. So Hoffman investigated and in nineteen eighteen
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: he publishes this famous report was called Mortality from Respiratory
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Diseases in the Dusty Trades, and it comes out. It
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: was published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: government federal government in nineteen eighteen. Hoffman was methodical. First,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: he looked at the government statistics on tiberulosis. He found
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: no evidence miners had lower rates of TB. Then he
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: looked at asthma death rates. They were five times higher
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: for coal miners than for other working men. Hoffmann looked
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: at census data who was still working after the age
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: of forty five. For farmers at the time, almost a
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: third were still working. For miners it was a fifth.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: If mining was so healthy, why were all the miners
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: disappearing from their profession. So he adds all this up,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: but he says, look, I don't buy it. I think
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: that this miners asthma's thing is something that we should
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: be concerned about. So here we have the senior statistician
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: from one of the most powerful and important institutions in
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: the country publishing a report on the health of workers
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: in one of the most important and critical industries in
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: the country and saying there's a problem. So what do
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: you think happens? Nothing happens, nothing think whatsoever? And why
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: does nothing happen? Because all kinds of people stood up
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: and read Hoffman's report and said, you've got no proof.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Let's give the students at pen credit for their patients.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Because this part of my talk went on for a
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: very long time, but I was trying to answer the
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: question at the core of proof, At what point do
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: you act? People argued after Hoffmann published his report that
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: we still didn't know quite enough, that he had a
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: lot of suggestive evidence but not definitive evidence. And that
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: was true, But it was also irrelevant because if you
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: wait until the evidence is perfect and complete, you'll never act.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: It was not until the nineteen seventies that people suddenly
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: realized that tens of thousands of miners were dying horrible deaths,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: vastly prematurely because of the dust they inhaled while working.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: In the minds.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Now, I think we can all agree that that is
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: a appalling story, right, that should never have happened. We
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: should have acted on this in nineteen eighteen. Instead, we
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: acted on this in nineteen seventy five. We look around
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: the room and we say to ourselves, we would never
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: do that, would we We're much too educated and sophisticated
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: and empathetic to ever look at the suffering of someone
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: else and say, oh, we're not going to act until
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: we have proof. But we do do that. All of
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: us do that. Everyone in this room is doing that
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: even as we speak. Now, what am I talking about?
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about football. Owen Thomas, the Redheaded Viking, was
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: a football player. So is his father Tom.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: It was the nineteen sixties. Yeah, so I was a
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: full back, which in the backfield. If you know anything
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: about American football.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Owen's grandfather played for Millersville University. His older brother, Morgan,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: played offensive tackle for East Stroudsburg University.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: And then Owen played.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: So I guess we're kind of a football family.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: On the dining table right in front of me are
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Owen's helmets from middle school and high school and college,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: all scratched and battered, lined up in a row.
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: It's hard for alignment to be a star, you know,
• 11:58
  Speaker 6: like you running back, quarterback, those are really the stars.
• 12:00
  Speaker 6: But he was definitely a feared player from all angles
• 12:04
  Speaker 6: and people knew who he was, so he was definitely
• 12:06
  Speaker 6: one of the one of the stars.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: He couldn't wait for the season to begin. You know,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: most most of the football players say, oh, I just
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: I don't want to The.
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: First day of practice was would just be like like running,
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: putting on a uniform and running.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: For him said I just can't wait to hit somebody.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: I just want to hit something.
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: And that was that's his own team, that's his own team.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: That when it came time for college, Owen Thomas went
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: to the University of Pennsylvania.
• 12:37
  Speaker 6: He was just kind of guy that on a on
• 12:38
  Speaker 6: a bad day when they had to wake up at
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: six seven o'clock in the morning to do a workout
• 12:42
  Speaker 6: and everyone you know, had class and everything. He was
• 12:45
  Speaker 6: the kind of guy that would get everybody motivated to
• 12:48
  Speaker 6: complete the workout and then go on with your day.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: He was named captain of the football team. Seventy six
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: out of the eighty players voted for him. Then, one
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: day out of the blue, in the spring of his
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: junior year, he hung himself in his apartment.
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: Tom sent me a text message except I was listened
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: to an a lecture, so saying call me. Well, there
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: are all these messages, call me, call me, call me.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: They drove down to Philadelphia, they went to identify their
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: son's body in the hospital, and in the car on
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: the way back on this terrible, terrible day, they got
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: a call from someone named Chris Newinski. Newinski is a
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: former college football player with a PhD in neuroscience who
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: runs the Concussion Legacy Foundation. He works with a group
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: of researchers at Boston University. For more than a decade,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: they've been autopsyying the brains of people who have, in
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: the course of their lives suffered repeated blows to the head,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: looking for something called chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE. Getting hit
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: in the head causes your brain to twist and bruise
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: if you get hit enough times. That bruising causes the
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: accumulation of a protein called TAO, and that tao slowly
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: works its way through the brain like a poison. So far,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Newinski's group has autopsied the brains of one hundred and
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: eleven former NFL players. One hundred and ten had CTE.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Seven of eight former Canadian Football League players had it,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: so did nine of fourteen semi pro players, forty eight
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: of fifty three college players, three out of fourteen high
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: school players. The symptoms of ct include difficulty thinking, impulsive behavior, depression,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: short term memory loss, difficulty planning, emotional instability, and suicidal
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: thoughts and behavior. It's not pleasant. One of the first
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: pro players diagnosed with CTE was Mike Webster. He was
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: a Hall of Fame center with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: died at fifty. In his house, his family found page
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: after page of scrippled notes written by Webster to document
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: his mental state. Like this, deep confusing, twisting, fishing line,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: tangled up mess of confusing things go.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: On all the time?
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Or Junior Seou and Dave Durson, two of the great
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: football players of their generation, both shot themselves in the
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: chest at the ages of forty three and fifty Why
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: in the chest to make sure their brains were intact
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: for autopsy to make the pathologists job easier? Now our
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: case like this absolute proof of a connection between CTE
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: and football players getting hit in the head. No. The
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: research group at Boston University has just published a study
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: which looked at players who had started playing tackle football
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: before the age of twelve. I'm quoting youth exposure to
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: tackle football may reduce resiliency to late life neuropathology may
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: reduce Remember they're working from a non representative sample autopsies
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: conducted on players whose families believe something was wrong. Proof
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: would be if you identified two thousand people, half of
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: whom played football and half of whom do not, followed
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: them over the course of their lives and compared the
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: autopsies of their brains at death. Did the football players
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: have on average more the protein TAO in their brain
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: tissue than the non football players. The problem is that
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: the average American male life expectancy is seventy five years.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: If we start that study now, we'll have definitive proof
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: somewhere around the turn of the next century. The much
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: much harder question is what you do in the interim,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: And the answer is that you do what Chris Nowinski
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: of the Concussion Foundation does. You plug away. You call
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: people up at the height of their grief and ask
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: them for brain tissue before the body of their loved
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: one is buried or cremated. You call up people like
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Owen Thomas's parents.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: This is a day when it was like poured and
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: poured and poured with rain the whole day, and so
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: we were going back. It was must have been about
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: like ten o'clock at night, right driving at the turnpike,
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: and suddenly this I get this phone call from this
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: person whose name I can hardly understand.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: The Thomases were too stunned to say no.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: But he still had to do quite a lot of
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: work because he had to then call the undertaker and
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: get the undertaker to get the brain matter which had
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: been just like dumped in a bag by the medical examiner. Yeah,
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: he has something to answer from. Well, the medical examiner
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: did an autopsy. Right, So this was a football player
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: who had committed suicide and he didn't he didn't make
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: any attempt to preserve the brain matter, which now I
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: look back on it and I think, how crazy is
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: that that that the brain matter was just like all
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: mixed up with all the rest of the bits and
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: pieces and just thrown in a bag.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Owen Thomas died in April. The following September, his parents
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: got a second call. Owen had CTE and suddenly it
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: all made sense. Why they're focused, joyful, high spirited son
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: had suddenly called and said, I'm failing at everything.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: How did that news change you?
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: We?
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: What was the impact on hearing that? You said? You
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: were relieved in some sense.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: That there was a contributing factor, that it wasn't just depression,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: that there was a cause that you could medical cause
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: that you could maybe say that contributed to him.
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: Well, it gave us a hold on He gave us
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: a purpose.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Not an answer, because there's still too much unknown for
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: that a purpose. Now what am I talking about? I'm
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: talking about football. What do we know about football? We
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: know about football approximately what Frederick Kaufman knew about old
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: dust in nineteen eighteen. So there I was in the
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Harrison Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania. It was twenty thirteen.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Owen Thomas had been dead for three years. There were
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: students in the room who had known him, who remembered him.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: So I told the story of how he was found
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: hanging in his apartment, and I asked them, is that
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: enough proof for you? Is the death of someone you
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: went to school with who was the captain of your
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: football team enough evidence to walk away from the game?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I sometimes think about that moment. When I met Bob's
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Library at New York University, I do a lot of
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: my research there. The library has a massive, multi story
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: atrium at its center, and a few years ago a
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: student jumped over one of the railings overlooking the atrium,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: and immediately, immediately, and at great expense, the university put
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: up high plexiglass screens in front of every railing. Then
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: a few years after that, a student found a way
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: to wriggle over the plexiglass and jump to his death.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: So the university installed an even more expensive and elaborate
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: and fool proof metal screen that was impossible to get
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: around or over. Two suicides, and they spent millions of dollars.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Why because the job of a university is to watch
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: out for the welfare of the students under its care.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: And NYU didn't need any more evidence to act.
• 21:58
  Speaker 8: Two thousand and nine lits in a crowd by coming
• 22:02
  Speaker 8: together in order to overcome the adversity the plans stake
• 22:07
  Speaker 8: in the field. In November, here.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Is what Penn did in response to the suicide of
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Owen Thomas and the results of his brain autopsy. They
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: honored him with forty seconds of silence before the season
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: opener the next fall against Lafayette. Owen's jersey had been
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: number forty. His teammates wore decals on their helmets with
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: the number forty on.
• 22:29
  Speaker 8: Them, blinking hand in hand parallel to the sideline, standing
• 22:34
  Speaker 8: for a forty second moment of silence and tribute to
• 22:38
  Speaker 8: their former teammate Owen Thomas, who pass away on Monday
• 22:43
  Speaker 8: Aprilty twenty six this past off season.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: And here is the statement the university issued upon hearing
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: that Owen Thomas had been diagnosed with CTE. I read
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: it to the audience when I was at Penn in
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: twenty thirteen. While we will never know the cause of
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Owen Thomas's depression and subsequent suicide. We are aware of
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: and deeply concerned about the medical issues now being raised
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: about football head injury, and will continue to work with
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: the Ivy League and the medical community in addressing these issues.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Owen's untimely death was a terrible tragedy, and we continued
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: to grieve for his loss. Where to start. Let's start
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: with the statement we will never know the cause of
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Owen Thomas's depression and subsequent suicide. Are you kidding me?
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: What is there more to know? A healthy young man
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: with no previous history of depression hangs himself in his
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: apartment and when they do an autopsy on his brain,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: they find he has the beginnings of a debilitating neurological
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: disorder caused by taking too many hits on the football field.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: And then the statement we are aware and deeply concerned
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: about the medical issues being raised about football head injuries.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: We are so aware and deeply concerned about the medical
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: issues being raised about football head injuries that three years
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: after Owen Thomas's death, Penn continues to play football. In
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: my book, that does not count as concern. That is
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: moral indifference, not long ago. I went to see Albegnoli.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: He's the head football coach at Glumbia University. Before that
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: he was at Penn. He was Owen Thomas's coach, and
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: he reminded me I'd left someone out. Owen Thomas wasn't
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: the only one.
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: Oh, we had two. We had Kyle Ambrosey too. They're
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: both traumatic. But Kyle's was unbelievable because.
• 24:50
  Speaker 7: That happened right in mid season, So it happened after
• 24:54
  Speaker 7: he scored two touchdowns or we'd beat Buck now fifty
• 24:56
  Speaker 7: one or something.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Kyle Ambrosi star running back on the Penn football team
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: and a student at the Wharton School of Business, just
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: like Owen Thomas. He shot himself at his mother's house
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: in October two thousand and five. There wasn't an autopsy
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: on Kyle Ambrosie's brain in two thousand and five. CTE
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: just wasn't on people's radar in the same way that
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: it is now, So we'll never know whether he suffered
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: from the disease the way we know with Owen Thomas.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: We don't have proof, but what happened to Kyle Ambrogie
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: sounds very much like what happened to Owen Thomas. All
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: his life, a young man plays a sport that involves
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: repeated blows to his brain, until suddenly he fell apart
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: in a way that looks an awful lot, like the
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: way people fall apart after they've had repeated blows to
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: their brain.
• 26:00
  Speaker 9: You know, there is even physical changes, like his eye
• 26:03
  Speaker 9: color got lighter, and you can just see that he
• 26:07
  Speaker 9: was fighting demons and he couldn't explain them.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: That's Kyle Ambrogie's brother Greg.
• 26:14
  Speaker 9: I asked him, and he, you know, would try to
• 26:17
  Speaker 9: explain them, and he just would run out of words.
• 26:20
  Speaker 9: He would open his mouth and nothing would come out,
• 26:22
  Speaker 9: and I would just look at him and I didn't.
• 26:24
  Speaker 10: Yeah, the only thing he said to me is, Mommy,
• 26:26
  Speaker 10: it's so dark.
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: It's scary.
• 26:28
  Speaker 10: And it was very frightening to him because he was
• 26:31
  Speaker 10: always used to being in control, and this isn't out
• 26:34
  Speaker 10: of control, feeling.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Kyle's mother, Donna, listening to the Ambrosies was like listening
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: to the Thomases. Someone you know becomes someone you don't
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: know right in front of your eyes, and they haven't
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: done anything. They haven't been in a terrible accident or
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: overdosed on drugs or squandered their life away. They've just
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: played a game, played it well.
• 26:59
  Speaker 10: And if you're always, like I said, the internally driven,
• 27:03
  Speaker 10: you know, never had to say, Kyle, do your homework,
• 27:06
  Speaker 10: go practice, go whatever. He always had it done ahead
• 27:11
  Speaker 10: of time. That was him. This is what he wanted
• 27:14
  Speaker 10: to do. So if you're used to being in control
• 27:16
  Speaker 10: and your mind is you're having thoughts that you don't
• 27:21
  Speaker 10: have control over, it's very scary.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Had anything you've done as a coach prepared you for
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I mean that's a really tough position to be.
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: No, no, no, nothing you can do.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: What did you say to your players.
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: Basically we're here for you. Yeah.
• 27:42
  Speaker 11: I mean, you know, anytime you get that kind of trauma,
• 27:46
  Speaker 11: to deal with it, because again, it kind of brings
• 27:50
  Speaker 11: you back to Okay, what's really important and what isn't important.
• 27:55
  Speaker 11: You know, you've been so much premium on Okay, you
• 27:57
  Speaker 11: gotta win this game, you gotta win that game. You're
• 27:59
  Speaker 11: trying to win a title, and yet when it comes
• 28:01
  Speaker 11: to human life that's rather trivial.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming the full team went to the funerals in
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: both cases. That must have been unbelievable.
• 28:14
  Speaker 7: It's it's very sad because again, it's hard to explain.
• 28:20
  Speaker 7: Not that it's any easier to lose somebody in a
• 28:21
  Speaker 7: car accident, but you can explain it. Or someone who
• 28:25
  Speaker 7: suffers from terminal cancer. It's just as traumatic, but you
• 28:30
  Speaker 7: can explain it. When you're a teammate of a kid
• 28:33
  Speaker 7: who commits suicide, you're you know, could I have Why
• 28:36
  Speaker 7: didn't I see this?
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: Could I have done something? Why? You know? I think
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: you always question yourself, what could I have done that?
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: Maybe in some other ways of death you kind of accept.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: I've thought a lot about that talk. I gave it penn.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure I won them over. The students listen politely,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: and at the end ask thoughtful and skeptical questions. I
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: talked about the costs of football. Why didn't when they
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: talk about the benefits? They asked, doesn't everything come with
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: a risk? Shouldn't people be free to make their own choices.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: A student who was on the football team stood up
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: and said, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for football.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: When I met with coach Bagnoli, he talked about rule changes,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: how they are now much more vigilant about concussions, how
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: they don't tackle in practice like they used to how
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: he doesn't believe that little kids should play tackle football.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I got the sense that a lot of students were
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: thinking about those things too. Maybe we can just manage
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: this problem, reduce the risk to some more acceptable level.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: After the speech, as I walked to the post event reception,
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: one of the big deans at PENN looked at me
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: and shook his head. He said, we're not stopping football.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Of course not, and it won't stop at least not
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: until the third suicide, or maybe the fourth suicide or
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: the fifth, at which point the students in Alumnia Pen
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: will finally say that's an awfully high price to pay
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: for a game. Al Begnoley brought up one more.
• 30:26
  Speaker 11: Name that's unfortunately becoming more and more prevalent than I
• 30:30
  Speaker 11: just saw, the kid from in Washington State whose brother
• 30:34
  Speaker 11: actually was here.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: The name of the kid from Washington State was Tyler Helensky.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: He was supposed to be the twenty nineteen starting quarterback
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: for the Washington State Cougars. A few days before my
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: interview with Begnolly, Helensky borrowed a teammate's rifle and shot
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: himself in the head. A bright, outgoing kid with a
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: big smile, no motive. It's unfortunately becoming more and more prevalent.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: But I guess we don't have enough proof. Well, it's
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: your classmates who are dying, right, it's your classmates who
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: are putting their lives at risk by playing this game.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: I think all of you has to think about has
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: to consider boycotting football games at PEN. And I think
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: you have to convince your friends to boycott football games
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: at PEN. And I think you have to pick it
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: outside football games a PEN. And I think you have
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: to go to the administrators of this university and you
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: have to ask them why is a world class institution,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: one of the finest universities of higher learning in this
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: planet exposing its own students to the risk of injury
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: and death. And if they ask for proof, tell them
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: you don't need proof. Sometimes proof is just another word
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: for letting people suffer.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Revisionist History is a Panoply production. The senior producer is
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Mia Lobel, with Jacob Smith and Camille Baptista. Our editor
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: is Julia Barton. Flon Williams is our engineer. Fact checking
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: by Beth Johnson, Original music by Luis Gara. Special thanks
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: to Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Glavo.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Suicide is a difficult topic. It can be hard for
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: people to talk about suicide or get help if they're
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: in danger, but there are resources available people want to help.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is one excellent resource. It's free, confidential,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: and available twenty four hours a day. The number in
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: the US is one eight hundred two seven three, eight
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: two five five one eight hundred two seven three Talk