0:15

Pushkin. Hello

0:20

everyone, I'm backed with the Revisionist Histories

0:22

ombusman Mariya Kanikova.

0:25

This is our third round and

0:27

she's here to grill me on the six

0:29

part series we just wrapped up on Guns in America.

0:32

This is a mail bag in the truest sense

0:35

of the word. We received an unprecedented

0:38

amount of listener mail in this series, and

0:40

Maria's come prepared with a whole slew

0:43

of your feedback. Some

0:45

nice, so

0:47

nice.

0:48

Yeah, well, I

0:50

am surprised at how much

0:52

nice we got, considering

0:54

the subject of this particular

0:57

season of Revisionist History. To be perfectly

1:00

honest, so let's

1:02

start with something really nice

1:04

and positive. Get the good stuff up tops,

1:06

exactly exactly, you know the praise

1:08

sound which, right, that's the feedback sandwich.

1:12

But you had a relatively light episode

1:15

in there about gun smoke, and

1:18

someone wrote in being

1:21

a little bit worried that you got the

1:23

murder rate wrong when you calculated

1:26

the.

1:26

Murders, which I can bring it on this.

1:29

Yes, all right. So basically

1:33

you had this episode where you talked about the

1:35

show that ran for how many years?

1:38

Twenty years, right, almost twenty years,

1:41

and your

1:43

producer Tali Emlin actually

1:47

went through several seasons

1:49

of it and calculated what the murder

1:52

rate would be, and you found that

1:54

it would actually, even though it's insane,

1:57

it is actually eighty times higher

2:01

than what it

2:03

would be in any city

2:05

in the United States today. Yes,

2:07

but it turns out that you might have actually

2:10

undercounted. According to this listener. So

2:13

here's the letter, the

2:15

murder rate in Dodge City was even

2:17

worse than you calculated. You

2:19

compared a season of the show to an annual

2:22

rate of modern day cities. However,

2:24

each episode probably takes place

2:26

in a single day or so the

2:29

entire season probably only

2:31

covered a couple months of time. That

2:34

would make the annual rate five

2:36

to six times worse than you

2:38

already calculated. So what

2:40

do we think about that?

2:42

Okay, I get where

2:44

this critique is coming from.

2:47

I think the some merit to it. I would point out,

2:49

though, when I asked Ally about this, she

2:51

says, if you look at the first two seasons,

2:54

so we have an episode said in

2:56

summer, we have one in winter, we have one on Christmas,

2:59

We've got a blizzard. So

3:01

they are kind of implying that

3:03

what we're seeing unfolding in

3:05

the mythical Dodge City is real

3:09

passage of time and not a series of episodes.

3:11

And also, by the way, the actors

3:14

get older, right, so

3:17

you know, when this starts,

3:19

Matt Dilon's a young man. When Gun Smoke ends,

3:21

Matt Dylan is no longer a young man. So

3:25

maybe the best way to say this is that, you

3:28

know, I think we should probably split the difference

3:30

and say that we were being excessively

3:33

generous to the fictional Dodge

3:35

City in suggesting that their murder

3:37

rate was only eighty times

3:39

higher than the next highest

3:42

American city. And

3:45

you know, maybe it should.

3:48

The accurate number is one sixty.

3:51

That is absolutely crazy. By

3:53

the way, I have never seen Gun Smoke,

3:55

and I had to look it up. The

3:58

first time I heard of it was on

4:00

your show, and.

4:02

I had to get for growing up in Russia.

4:04

This is true. But I also

4:06

had this like brain fart moment

4:09

where Matt Dylan. I was like, wait,

4:11

but Matt Dylan isn't that old.

4:14

Oh you would think of the other man.

4:15

I was thinking of the actor Matt Dylan, and

4:17

so for a second I was like, wait, how

4:19

is Matt Dylan in this show gun Smoke?

4:22

And it was just like this, this total fictional

4:24

universe that I created in my head before I

4:27

looked up what it actually was.

4:29

Years ago, maybe thirty thirty,

4:32

maybe twenty five. I'm at a party in the West

4:34

Village and I realized

4:36

Matt Dillon is there when

4:38

he was really at the height of his fame. He's still famous,

4:40

but he was very I ingratiated

4:43

myself with him and spent a delightful

4:46

evening. It went well past the evening that I

4:49

spent a delightful evening in his company, and I

4:51

can testify that he is

4:54

everybody's charming in real life as he would as

4:56

the movies was jest, he would be.

4:58

That's wonderful. Was he named after the show?

5:01

Well, I think it's obvious he was, right,

5:03

Yeah, because he kind of he looks

5:05

not unlike the

5:09

it's the fictional Matt Dill. Maybe his parents

5:11

had a notion, but who knows whither that or

5:13

like just some agent gave it to him when he was

5:16

nineteen years old.

5:17

Well, I think I think that's amazing. And you

5:20

know, to my credit, I also did not have a TV growing

5:22

up, so notice, so you know, ah,

5:24

we have that in common. So

5:27

we did have this one lighthearted

5:29

reader's email, But

5:32

every other email, or

5:34

at least the vast majority, were about

5:37

one single episode. Do you want to care to guess which

5:39

one it was?

5:39

I'm going to guess it was the assault rifle.

5:41

Episode, and you would have guessed correctly,

5:44

it's that episode.

5:46

Before you go out, before you get into the let

5:48

me just say that there are

5:50

things you do as journalists,

5:52

and you know this well, that are deliberate provocations.

5:55

You do them precisely because you do think you are

5:57

running counter to people's

6:00

expectations and preconceptions.

6:02

This would be one of those. I

6:04

was poking the bear, and

6:07

I guess the bear. The bear was post pair

6:10

was duly poked.

6:12

Mission accomplished. So let's

6:14

get into some of these letters, because when

6:16

you listen to excerpts from

6:19

them, you start realizing that

6:21

it's as if people listened

6:23

to two different episodes, depending

6:25

on where they were coming from. To

6:27

begin with, their own opinions

6:30

about gun control colored

6:32

what they heard you say and how

6:35

they experienced your interviews to

6:37

a shocking degree. I mean, actually not shocking.

6:39

I'm not at all shocked, but it's crazy

6:42

reading these and seeing just

6:45

the opposite responses. So they

6:47

will write things like, let's

6:50

see, the gun rights guy was more genial

6:53

than the gun control guy, but he

6:55

was just as misleading. All

6:58

he did was smile while he made

7:00

you look left when you should

7:02

have looked to the right. And

7:04

then they have all of these figures behind that

7:06

saying that, oh, well, they're saying that

7:09

that you know, he is

7:11

saying that it only takes three seconds

7:13

to do this, but mass shooters

7:16

are there's going to be so much going

7:18

on and his math is wrong and this is wrong,

7:20

and that is wrong, and

7:24

they say that you were led astray. But then

7:27

you have someone saying, Malcolm,

7:30

you know, I'm so proud of you for finally seeing

7:32

the light now and now I'm quoting.

7:34

Now, let's remember that the problem in America

7:37

is a murder problem, not

7:39

a weapon problem. So

7:42

you have two very very

7:44

different points of view, right, and

7:47

let's talk about that. How

7:49

can people walk away from

7:52

the same episode, listening to the same

7:54

data with just completely

7:56

opposite perspectives.

7:58

Well, I mean, it shouldn't come as a surprise that

8:02

people's when people listen

8:04

to something that they

8:06

feel strongly about, they have a subjective reading,

8:10

nor, you know, nor

8:12

does it surprise me now after thirty years of

8:14

writing books that people

8:17

don't read or listen to the end.

8:20

You know, I wrote a book called my

8:23

second book, Blink, was a

8:25

book that looked critically

8:27

at When I say critically,

8:29

it examined, brote the pros and cons of snap

8:32

judgments, but you had to keep

8:34

reading. It started out on the pros

8:37

and then as I dug deeper got

8:39

interested in the cons. The number

8:41

of people who either supported

8:44

or loved that book or hated that book because they

8:47

perceived it as being a book

8:49

about celebrating snap

8:51

judgments was limitless. You

8:53

know, anytime you tell a story that has a twist, you're

8:55

going to leave some portion of people along

8:57

the way. And I think this episode

9:00

is a proof of that. Like basically

9:02

where I end up. Remember, as you

9:04

know, is a gun is a gun as a gun.

9:06

Parsing these these distinctions between

9:08

gun is a pointless exercise

9:11

that leads you away from the central issue, which

9:13

is that having lots of lethal

9:16

weapons floating around in a society

9:18

is not the best idea.

9:21

Right. Obviously, when you were doing these

9:23

interviews, you you know you want

9:25

to do the interview, and you never want to You

9:27

don't want to antagonize a person you're interviewing

9:30

in the middle of the interview, especially when they're

9:32

holding a gun. But I'm actually just curious

9:34

from a personal perspective, if if you care

9:37

to comment, were you kind

9:39

of were you persuaded by

9:42

by these arguments so that

9:44

it actually doesn't

9:47

make that much of a difference, and

9:49

that you you know that

9:51

that we should that

9:54

were barking up the wrong tree when we're looking

9:56

at this guy legislation.

9:57

I was there two persuasive things in

10:00

the reporting a persuison. One

10:02

was with my gun expert,

10:05

the guy I've shot within North Carolina, Greg

10:08

Wallace. And what's persuasive

10:10

about his discussion is

10:12

not how fast you can shoot

10:14

a semi automatic weapon versus an automatic weapon,

10:16

although that the thing is relevant. The real

10:18

core issue he was getting at is said assault

10:21

rifle bands don't ban assault

10:24

rifles. They ban a subcategory

10:27

of assault rifles which qualify

10:29

for the band not because they are more lethal, but

10:31

because they have certain cosmetic features that

10:34

make them unattractive or mean

10:36

looking. Right, Really, what you're getting

10:38

so he's his function

10:40

in the story is to remind us that, look,

10:43

this is a bullshit exercise. You

10:45

may think that an assault rifle ban bands assault

10:47

rifles, it does not, Right, The

10:49

fundamental platform of the

10:52

AR fifteen remains

10:55

untouched by these bands.

10:56

Right.

10:56

You can still use the basic weapon, you just can't

10:59

use some of these accessories. That's the point

11:01

of with the number two is it

11:04

is not a distinction without a difference to

11:07

point out that a semi automatic

11:09

weapon is not the same as an automatic weapon.

11:11

They are fundamentally different. And if

11:14

people are under the illusion that

11:17

an assault weapon is

11:20

basically like a machine gun, the wrong,

11:23

right. Yeah, And that's not a trivial mistake.

11:26

Right.

11:27

So a lot of these as I'm reading through on

11:29

this one in this one letter, a lot of

11:31

them, you know, are fussing

11:33

around in the kind of minor

11:36

details of these distinctions, and it's just

11:38

like, it's not the point. The point

11:41

is, like, what we're setting out to do here is

11:43

not actually what we're doing A and B.

11:45

This brings us to the second persuasive character

11:47

in that the most persuasive character in that episode

11:50

was the er doctor. Yeah, the

11:53

guy in DC who had studied mass

11:55

shootings and points out that the

11:59

truly lethal weapon in the hands of a mass

12:01

shooter is a handgun and

12:03

not an assault rifle. And that's

12:05

because what makes a gun lethal

12:07

is not just a

12:10

matter of its ballistic properties.

12:12

It's a question of how it's used. And

12:15

there are so many quote unquote advantages

12:17

to a handgun in

12:19

the way it's used that it makes it, at the end

12:21

of the day, a more dangerous weapon in a mass shooting. There

12:24

is a whole kind of really

12:26

weird academic subculture

12:28

devoted to the analysis

12:31

of mass shootings, and you would

12:33

be surprised how divergent those findings

12:35

are from a lot of our preconceptions

12:39

about what happens in a mass shooting.

12:41

That's really interesting, and I actually saw that

12:44

as a thread throughout this entire

12:46

season of Revisionist History,

12:49

just how strong identity

12:52

politics and our sense of who

12:54

we are and how we define ourselves is

12:57

when it comes to parsing

12:59

the world and those definitional

13:01

issues.

13:02

Yeah, the other moment, you know, in the assault

13:06

Rifle episode, you know, it ends with me confronting

13:08

this

13:12

this anti gun lobbyist,

13:14

big time opponent

13:17

of the Second Amendment in Washington, and I

13:19

think the reason he gets very upset,

13:22

and actually we didn't even use the parts of the

13:24

of the conversation where he was most upset. And

13:27

I think one of the reasons he was so upset is that I

13:30

was out flanking him on

13:32

the left, and

13:35

I was taking a more anti gun position than he

13:37

was. And not only that, in order to outflank

13:39

him on the left, I was using right wing

13:41

arguments or right wing facts. You

13:44

know that that episode is if you think

13:46

about it structurally, that's what it

13:48

is. It's taking arguments most commonly

13:51

used on the right to

13:53

draw a highly liberal conclusion. It's just confused.

13:56

It's just confusing to do that.

13:57

Malcolm, you have come a long way

13:59

from your debating fiasco.

14:04

Don't even get me started. We

14:08

will be right back BacT more from

14:10

the mailbag.

14:27

All right, well, let's go back

14:29

to guns, because I do want

14:31

to talk about some of the other episodes.

14:34

I think that one theme that we

14:36

haven't touched on, but that is,

14:38

you know, deeply connected to all

14:41

of everything. We have been discussing,

14:43

the racial and the socioeconomic

14:45

underpinnings of all of this and

14:48

the fact that it's kind of woven into the

14:50

fabric of the country. And

14:55

you know, you you talk

14:57

about in these are different episodes. There's

14:59

Chicago, you know, there's there's DC, there's

15:03

and you have you have Alabama. You

15:05

have these very different

15:08

geographically parts of the country, urban,

15:11

rural, and yet you

15:13

have some of the

15:16

exact same reasons why we have

15:20

still despite all of the

15:22

incredible medical stuff

15:25

that's happened, and despite

15:27

how many lives are saved now that wouldn't

15:29

have been saved in the past, we still

15:31

have these huge disparities, and we still

15:34

have people dying who shouldn't be dying

15:36

because either they're the wrong

15:38

color, or they're in a place where they

15:40

seem like they're the wrong color, or

15:43

they're in a place that's so economically

15:45

marginalized that you

15:48

know, they can't get to a trauma center, probably

15:51

because that area was the wrong color at

15:53

some point, and it's just

15:57

it's heartbreaking, but it's still the reality.

15:59

Yeah, this reminds me of

16:02

and I think I'm getting this right, something

16:04

I read years ago about what is the

16:06

in fact, what is the effect of enrichment

16:09

programs on test score

16:12

gaps between black and white kids

16:15

and reading ritual programs

16:17

increase the testcore

16:19

gap, they don't decrease it, even though they're intended

16:22

to decrease it. But what they do is

16:24

if you give reading enrichment to someone who reads

16:27

a lot, they're going to

16:29

reap the most of that boost. If

16:31

you give a reading enrichment to someone doesn't read much,

16:34

they're not going to get much out of it because they're not reading

16:36

to begin with. So something

16:39

that we introduced as a way to narrow

16:41

the gap ends up widening the gap, which is a

16:43

reminder that not all innovations do what

16:46

we have an assumption. Sometimes I think that

16:49

the purpose of an innovation is to shrink

16:51

the gap between the haves and have nots. This

16:54

is so often violated that it's time

16:56

we shelve that notion and understand that

16:59

innovations are just energy.

17:01

You know, they can be put to whatever use we

17:03

want, and sometimes what they do is just turbocharge

17:06

existing inequities. And I think macare

17:09

is an example of this exact

17:11

thing. That you can't put

17:13

trauma centers everywhere too expensive.

17:16

You can only put them in places where you can justify

17:19

them economically. And what

17:21

are those places, Well, those are wealthy places. So

17:23

you put them in wealthy places, and they have the effect of

17:26

making the quality of healthcare

17:28

provided in wealthy places, which was already better

17:30

than everyone else everywhere else even better.

17:33

Right, So when everyone

17:35

who goes to a hospital gets you tod for a gun

17:38

shot dies, we don't

17:40

notice the difference between good hospitals and bad hospitals.

17:43

But when you put a trauma center in one of

17:45

those places and you don't have another one, then you begin to notice

17:47

it's a huge difference.

17:48

Right.

17:49

I was just at something when we were talking about AI,

17:52

and everyone's you know, we're obviously very excited

17:54

about the possibility

17:56

that AI will transform all

17:58

manner of things. It's really unclear

18:01

whether AI lifts all boats

18:03

equally, closes the gap

18:05

between haves and have nots, or widens the gap.

18:07

Patoo has no idea. Anyone

18:09

who tells you that they know which way it'll go, doesn't

18:12

you know, it was fooling you.

18:14

That's that's a very good point.

18:16

And I mean, if I had to bet on one outcome

18:18

or the other, I would say probably it's not going to

18:20

lift all boats equally, just because

18:23

also who's going to have access to AI,

18:26

right, and who's going to have access to

18:28

the technologies, and who's going to have the time

18:30

to learn how to use them? Yeah, so

18:33

who knows? Who knows?

18:35

On that one? I'm actually an optimist.

18:37

Good, I'm glad.

18:38

Well, at least I'll say this that over

18:42

time, I would expect it to

18:45

close the gap, not even

18:48

so quite explicitly. It's obvious

18:50

to me it lifts all boats. It's obviously

18:52

in the short term, people with access

18:54

to the technology will benefit the most. So I'm interested

18:57

in making a medium to long term. I

18:59

think in meetium to long term it does not merely

19:02

lift all boats. If I had to put

19:04

my money on something, I would

19:06

say it would close the gap that

19:09

the farmer in Bangladesh

19:13

benefits more from AI than the

19:16

than the factory farmer

19:19

with fifty million dollars in equipment

19:21

in Iowa.

19:22

I hope you're right.

19:23

These days, I'm only really optimistic about one thing, and

19:25

that's it. Everything else is bad.

19:28

All right, All right, well, well let's cling to that.

19:31

So now back to the optimistic

19:34

news of the trauma centers. But

19:37

I was one of the things that I am

19:39

curious about is how strongly

19:42

do you actually agree with this idea of moral

19:44

hazard that you raise

19:46

in relation to the

19:49

improvements and care, because

19:52

I don't know if I actually buy that.

19:54

You don't buy that. No, So the argument

19:56

was that doctors have become so

19:58

good at saving lives that

20:00

it's relieve the pressure on the

20:03

rest of society to do something real

20:06

about the gunman. Exactly that

20:09

if doctors had done nothing over

20:12

the last fifty years, this is the counterfactual

20:15

the murder rate would be. We

20:18

probably have four or five times of spending homicides

20:21

in a given year. Let's say we had, we'd have one hundred thousand homicides

20:23

as opposed to twenty thousand homicides. And

20:26

at one hundred thousand, the current

20:28

American policy set of policy positions

20:30

would be untenable. We would jump

20:33

up and down and say enough stuff. Now, do

20:35

I think that there is some truth in that? Yes.

20:38

However, then I

20:40

thought, after I'd finished the episode

20:43

and I was writing this next book, I'm working on

20:46

doing something on the opioid crisis, and I realized,

20:48

Oh, we're at one hundred

20:50

and twenty thousand

20:52

opioid whatever it is, one hundred and ten thousand opioid

20:55

deaths a year and hasn't

20:58

really moved the needle. We didn't even talk about it.

21:00

Yep.

21:01

So, and also, opioid

21:04

deaths are not dissimilar to

21:09

homicide deaths in a sense that it's clustered

21:11

in various parts of the country,

21:14

various slightly younger age groups.

21:17

You know, the fact that we spend an enormous amount

21:19

of time arguing about mass shootings

21:21

when mass shootings are what, less than one

21:23

percent of total homicide deaths in a

21:26

given year, and very little time on the

21:28

remaining ninety nine percent, suggests

21:30

to me that maybe it wouldn't make a

21:32

difference. Maybe the moral hazard thing is just a kind

21:34

of intellectual nicety. The

21:37

opioid thing would suggest that if

21:40

it's the wrong people dying, really

21:42

hard to get people upset.

21:44

Yeah, I mean, that's, to be perfectly

21:46

honest, that's exactly what I was thinking when I

21:48

was listening to this. I was saying, I actually think the moral

21:50

hazard argument is bullshit, and

21:52

that we wouldn't care, and

21:55

that it's just these days we

21:57

also are so immune

21:59

to a lot of this stuff where

22:01

you're just like, oh, yeah, you know, I

22:03

guess more people are dying.

22:05

And here's the

22:08

so here's the let me make a let me return,

22:10

let me do another backflip and say,

22:13

Okay, here's here's here's

22:16

a here's a moral hazard argument, And maybe

22:18

that it's a it's a mechanism argument. So

22:21

moral hazard is as a term

22:24

is used most frequently in the insurance industry.

22:27

If I ensure you against a risk, I

22:29

make your motivation

22:32

to avoid that risk, I diminish your

22:35

class. Example would be you live in a flood

22:37

zone and I

22:40

give you flood insurance, or the federal government you

22:43

know, provides flood insurance. Nobody

22:45

moves from South Beach. Yep, logically

22:48

you should live in South Peach. In fact, they're building.

22:50

They built billions of dollars in luxury

22:52

house against South Beach in the last ten years, precisely

22:55

because the builders are and

22:57

the not not just builders, the

23:00

purchasers of those apartments are reasonably

23:02

sure that in the event of an environmental catastrophe,

23:04

they will be bailed out by the government. So why not

23:06

why not live in paradise until you get there? The

23:09

answer to that is that

23:12

just because one institution

23:14

or body insures against risk

23:17

and provides a mechanism for moral hazard

23:19

doesn't mean everybody does. So what's

23:21

happening in Miami is that sure,

23:25

if the hurricane wipes out your house,

23:27

the Feds may bail you out, or the statement bail

23:29

you out. But in the meantime,

23:32

no private insurer is

23:34

writing you up policy, right,

23:36

so you're other self assuring or you're naked.

23:39

The cycling that's happening that I suspect

23:41

may soon happen, and there are people talking

23:43

about this now, is maybe

23:46

when you buy a house in

23:49

South Beach, the mortgage

23:52

rate is three points higher,

23:54

maybe it's ten percent. Maybe the bank

23:56

just says, you know what, why am I

23:59

writing a mortgage for an

24:01

apartment in South Beach that's the same

24:03

as an apartment on a mountaintop

24:06

in Maine when the odds

24:08

that one will be swept away in a hurricane are

24:11

a thousand times higher than the other. But

24:13

really, by a quirk of history, we have

24:15

national mortgage rates. Why

24:18

are mortgage rates national if risks are not

24:20

equal across What happens

24:22

when we start localizing mortgage rates. That

24:24

is a way in which moral hazard

24:27

problems can be corrected

24:29

by the market. Right, But it's

24:31

a very.

24:31

Different kind of moral hazard. Right. It's actually

24:34

you can't draw this then

24:36

equivalence there, because one is a personal

24:38

choice you're making, right, You're you're

24:41

choosing to buy a house knowing that it'll

24:43

be fine or not. The other one

24:45

is the way that you're looking at policy legislation

24:48

where you don't think it applies to you, where

24:52

oh, well, you know, I'm

24:54

not the one dying, or

24:57

you know, I think I think it's a it's a slightly

24:59

different decision making calculus. And in

25:02

one case, you're talking about kind

25:04

of discretionary spending.

25:07

I mean, obviously having houses

25:09

isn't discretionary, but you know what I mean buying

25:11

but buying a condown in South Beach certainly is

25:14

versus you know, life

25:16

and death and policies

25:19

that are on a more

25:22

fundamental global based.

25:25

Yes, But here my point was I should

25:27

restate my point. My point is that moral

25:32

hazard is a term that applies

25:34

to any kind of policy

25:37

that removes the kind

25:39

of necessary pressure for behavioral

25:42

change. Sure, my point is, using

25:44

the mortgage example, was that just because

25:48

one mechanism removes pressure doesn't

25:50

mean there are other mechanisms that can't exert it.

25:52

So and you can see that with housing. What

25:55

I'm wondering is, in the case of if

25:57

we had one hundred thousand homicide

25:59

deaths every year, or if

26:02

we continue to have these one hundred and whatever

26:05

plus, is

26:08

there another mechanism by which on

26:11

a non effected populations might

26:13

be affected. So

26:17

you can imagine if

26:19

you live in downtown

26:21

San Francisco and

26:24

you see the results

26:26

on a day to day basis of what the

26:28

opioid crisis is doing to vulnerable

26:31

communities, that's a kind of pressure.

26:33

Sure, So what if what

26:36

if I imagine that you're the way

26:38

you think about the opioid crisis if you live

26:40

in downtown Sanrancisco, it's very different

26:42

than if you lived in Marine County. So

26:45

what happens if Marine County starts

26:47

to look like downtown San Francisco.

26:49

In other words, there is not it's

26:51

not absolutely clear to me that the kinds of pressures

26:55

that would change people's thinking

26:58

in a place are always going to be confined

27:01

to downtown San Francisco and downtown

27:03

LA And right, there's a there

27:05

could be there's a scenario where people living

27:07

in suburban enclaves begin to

27:10

be confronted with the consequences

27:12

of social policies in a way that they're not now right,

27:16

Sure, Sure.

27:17

I mean I get that argument, and

27:19

I think and I think that that's actually that

27:21

that's a valid argument. But I just don't see,

27:24

you know, how we're going to get without

27:27

massive horrible things happening to the world.

27:29

How we're going to get more in county looking like downtown

27:31

San Francisco. It's just a you

27:34

know, it's a it's a nice what if exercise,

27:36

but but it doesn't seem like an actual

27:38

solution.

27:42

We are going to take a little break and be back with

27:44

some final thoughts.

27:57

So so we had you know, we've talked about

28:00

a lot of problems, and

28:02

so we had one letter that finally

28:04

turns to the question of okay, so what do

28:06

we do? But here's here's what this

28:09

letter from South Carolina asks. My

28:12

request is this, I need help

28:14

with the So now, what if

28:16

Malcolm were in charge of this topic, what

28:18

would he do? Copy Canada's

28:20

rules, build a new hospital in Chicago

28:22

in a certain gun violence prone area, force

28:26

all cities to report bullet contact injuries

28:28

and not just fatalities. So I'm Malcolm,

28:31

You're now in charge of this.

28:34

Well, all of those

28:36

things. I mean, I

28:38

think we have to accept rist fall that there's no one

28:41

there is no one thing we can do here. Probably

28:44

have to do twenty things. The

28:47

big my big takeaway

28:49

from doing that series was I came

28:51

away fundamentally disillusioned. In

28:54

the power of conventional

28:57

government approaches to solve the problem. I

29:00

don't. Actually, I was struck in talking to people

29:02

who are on the front lines of this epidemic

29:05

how infrequently people talked about gun

29:07

control. I mean, they talked about in passing, but it

29:09

is just not The majority

29:12

of gun violence in this country

29:14

is people to people with the

29:16

legal guns. You can change, you can

29:18

pass all the laws you want. They're

29:20

not being touched by that. I mean, there are little things

29:22

Washington could do around the margin, but just

29:25

changing the conversation so

29:28

that we're not arguing in the abstract about

29:31

which law does this and which law does that. A

29:34

couple of seasons ago, I did this episode on homelessness

29:38

and they spent a lot of time in Jacksonville, Florida,

29:40

which has an exemplary homelessness program,

29:43

by the way, and someone involved

29:45

that program said, we had this conversation which

29:48

I didn't use in the episode. I've thought about

29:50

all the times long time since. She

29:52

said, you know, they do account of their homeless

29:54

populationship, so they have a really really accurate picture

29:56

going back for years how their population

29:59

has fluctuated over time. And she

30:01

said, you know, there aren't more homeless

30:04

in Jacksonville today than there were five

30:07

years ago. In fact, is less, but

30:09

they're more visible. And then she went

30:11

into the long discussion of why

30:14

all the reasons why they might be more visible, and

30:17

it was really interesting to me because we

30:20

do make this mistake where we confuse

30:23

the severity of a problem with the visibility of

30:25

a problem. And

30:27

the thing that causes pressure is

30:29

not severity, it's visibility. And

30:32

so when the homeless are visible in

30:34

Jacksonville, you get movement

30:37

behind it. So now when the problem is

30:39

it's actually small than it used to be in the past, but

30:41

there's urgency now because they're visible, and

30:44

when it was this huge problem that was hidden, there

30:46

wasn't the same kind of So like that

30:49

distinction so often

30:51

I think allied that distinction

30:53

between urgency and visibility.

30:56

So I think, though, what I hope to get from the series

30:59

is not that it pass a law or

31:01

ban ar fifteens or whatever. I

31:03

think I just wanted to make the problem more visible.

31:06

The last episode is called sin is the Failure

31:08

to Bother. To Kat, I'm not so interested

31:11

in what people decide to do to solve the problem,

31:13

because there's a million ways to get it the problem. It's

31:16

not even just one problem. I'm mainly

31:18

interested in trying to get people to care and

31:21

to think clearly about what they're caring

31:23

about.

31:25

On that really really happy note,

31:27

thank you for an inspiring and

31:30

optimistic conversation. By the way,

31:32

we're probably you know, we don't have time. But

31:34

I loved the Shockley episode. I

31:37

thought it was so much fun and

31:39

I hope people listen to the end. That

31:41

last sentence. Just what

31:45

an amazing, amazing reveal. I

31:47

mean, Freud would have just like been been

31:50

there. Oh

31:52

Freud's back in a big way,

31:55

but it was. It was such a great episode. I

31:57

love it. Thank you, Ray, all right, thanks

31:59

Malcolm.

32:02

This episode of Revisionist History was

32:04

produced by ben A, daph Haffrey, Tali

32:06

Emlin, and Jacob Smith. Editing by

32:09

Serah Nix, original scoring by

32:11

Luis Kira, mastering by Jake Gorski,

32:13

an engineering by Nina Lawrence.

32:16

I'm Malcolm Cloudwell.