Wake that answer up in the morning Breakfast Club.
Yes, the world most dangerous morning show to Breakfast Club Charlamagne the God just hilarious and we had to step out for a second.
But we have the great Malcolm Gladwell here this morning. Good morning brother, good morning, Morning, Morning Morning.
He just released the six part series Our Revision is History is Back.
What is the series about?
Man, It's about gun violence. Decided to do up an sort of an extended look at what we're not talking about when it comes to guns in this country, some of them. It ranges all over the map. There's a We started by making fun of the Supreme Court, which is surprisingly easy to do. There's one there's this one case that they had two years ago, which is this big the New York City where they struck down a New York state gun law that had been a place
for one hundred years. And there's an exchange and they tape you know, their or arguments. They tape them so you can listen to them. There's an exchange where the justices to the Justices Alito and Kavanaugh are arguing with the lawyer for New York State and their their argument is that we would all be better off if we could carry handguns on the subway, And the lawyer for New York State is like, basically, she's insane. Basically she's like, have you ever ridden the subway? You know what a
gunfight on a subway would look like? And they're completely oblivious, and so we I went on and on about this, like imagining it's a bunch of guys. One of the guy's alitos from like a rich kid from suburban New Jersey. If he has ever ridden the subway in his life, I'd be very surprised. Kavanaugh is like a rich kid from suburban DC, like, you know, the closest he came
to the subway was his mom's minivan. And they're having this surreal conversation with a legit think that if everybody on the A train had a glock, we would be safer, Like it's just like that level. So that's that's sort of one of the early ones. And then tell a bunch of about what I'm sorry about a crazy story about a guy in Alabama who had a shooting in his home and what happens when the ambulance doesn't come because they think the the kid who got shot is black wow.
And and then I went the last one is the one of the most moving ones' ever done. There's a guy, an er doc at the University of Chicago Hospital cut up called up Della Price and grew up on the South Side, but goes to med school and then practices on the South Side. And that's, you know, obviously one of the epicenters of gun violence in this country. I mean,
I just sat down with him. I went Chicago. I sat down with him and he's start of talking about the experience of when you don't know what the people are wheeled in on the gurney on a Saturday night, and he'll know chances are he grew up with. That kid told me, I think fifteen people he grew up with have been killed by guns in the last since he you know, and when he said grew up with he met friends people, he said his definition was somebody
who was in his phone. I know them personally. I just, I just I just went all around the country, you know, Alabama, Chicago, he went to hung out with some trauma surgeons in DC, talk about what happens when when you show up at a and it was just the most the one of the fascinating things about it was very few of the people who I talked to who are on the front
lines of gun Mountain's country, talked about gun control. There's an interest them, it's it's they see what's going on and the debate that we the policy debates we have in Washington are just so far removed from their daily experience. If two kids, both with illegal handguns, get high on a Saturday night and have an argument and shoot each other, how exactly is a law and Washington supposed to fix that?
Yeah?
Right? Or you get shot and you die. Because this is the story I was telling. In Chicago. For the longest time, there was no trauma center on the South side of Chicago. If you got shot, they took you by ambulance all the way to the north side. You know far that is traffic, So lots of people, all these cases of kids who would just die in the
ambulance on the way. Now, how exactly is like a you know, some abstract argument about the Second Amendment going to fix the flight of somebody who's got to spend thirty five minutes in an ambulance to get to a
trauma center. So it's like I just I just came to the conclusion that there's a lot of people in this country who are deeply invested in these debates that have been going on for uh, you know, for decades now, and they're just out of touch with and even something as simple this is maybe gonna get me a little trouble. But what do we when we talk about gun buns in this country? We spend a huge amount of time
talking about mass shootings. Mass shootings are statistically a drop in the bucket, They're rare, and so we're consumed with the very tiny part of the problem that happens to affect middle class right, and then the rest of it is like whatever, kind of shrugging whatever.
I got so many questions based off what you just said. Back to the subway thing real quick. Yes, I don't think handguns everybody having a handgun on the subway will make things safer, But people do feel safer when they see.
Police officers with handguns on the sub absolutely.
How do you explain that, Well, because the police officer knows how to use the gun. The problem, well, I mean problem with a handgun is so hilarious. You talk to people who actually know a lot about guns and they will tell you it is so hard to hit some hit what you want to hit with a handgun, particularly if you're not an expert and you're terrified. So like, if two people have a shootout on a subway cars,
they're gonna hit everybody. They're gonna be like, it's gonna be Mayhem Like Yeah, this idea that everyone is cool under pressure when they're making a life or that decision with a hand is nuts. Even police, well even police officers don't always hit what they're supposed to hit. Yeah.
I had a really fun discussion with a prosecutor in Brooklyn on this very question, and he was like, you know, I've been doing this for whatever twenty years, He's I get even even cops rarely shoot straight, So why would we want to introduce more guns into a closed steel box running under the East River? You know, like it's just the but like it's just the thing that's weird.
Is just how out of touch? What I really my real point was not to get into an argument about guns on the subway, is was the idea that our policy is being made in this country by a bunch of people who are completely out of touch.
Already out of touch are our gun lobby is just too in their pockets because I mean when you look at Post yeah.
You know it's they're just making these sort of abstract legal arguments. And you know, I sort of wanted to why are they even debating gun control in Washington? Why don't they They should take that show on the road. Let's let's put them on the A train at eight o'clock at night and then show them. Okay, let's what do you think would happen if six people on this
in this car right now we're carrying a handgun. I mean, they're just there has to we have to do something to kind of reconnect the conversation.
Why do you think we as Americans are so obsessed with guns?
Well, you know, I'm Canadian, So that's why I say we I'm looking here. No, I was gonna say, I didn't mean that I was, but like so it's just, you know, we're just to the North Settle roughly the same time by people from Europe and you know, and whatever. I mean, the history is parallel, but we're not obsessed with I've never been able to wrap my mind around well, I don't have it. What I'm saying is I can't answer that question because I grew up in Canada and
where there's no guns. I didn't see a gun till like you got to be until I got over here, So I don't know you could. I suppose there's all kinds of complicated historical reasons for that. But it's weird. How kind of gun focused.
Is it the legislation you think? I mean, I mean, I don't know a gun law in Canada.
So yeah, well so if you watch, this is not an answer to the question out of but if you watch, there's a category of Canadian Westerns. So the same idea, some guy out on the range and the you know in the in the frontier, like bringing justice. In Canadian Westerns, the mounty not a not a not a sheriff, but like he spends all of his time like pulling dogs out of the river and like helping middle old ladies. He doesn't even carry a gun. Like in the Canadian
fantasy of the wild West. It's like, you know, somebody, somebody lost a cow and they call. In the American fantasy, it's like people are So there's something about the fantasies. Right from the beginning, there was a weird set of fantasies that get attached to I think TV. I did an episode of this series on this gun series on visions History that looked that was all about gun smoke.
You know.
It was the longest running Western absolutely, and we did. One of the things we did is we calculated, so Gunsmoke takes place in Dodge City in Kansas, and we tried to calculate, based on the TV show, what would the homae what's the homicide rate in the fictional Dodge City And the answer is it's like eighty times higher than than the highest homicide rate in a real American city. So in our fantasy world, we created an America that is infinitely more dangerous and scary than the real America.
Right And by the way, Gun Smoke was on TV for twenty years. It was it was on for twenty years, twenty years. It's one of those popular TV shows yea both time, and it was peddling a kind of vision of American life that was again out of touch.
Do you think that is because the media is always leading. They would say, if it bleeds, it leads, So we think that America is way worse than it actually is because of the news.
Yeah, I do think. Well, it's you know, it's an odd thing I got. Really, you know, when Ron DeSantis was running around lecturing New yorker is on how dangerous New York is. Meanwhile, New York and New York State are so much safer than Florida. Florida, you want to go someplace and put your life in your hands, go to Jacksonville.
Jackie and kill Wow.
The idea, The idea that the governor of one of the most violent states in the country is lecturing New Yorkers New York City, New York City and New York State, by the way, one of the safest regions of the country, the idea, and nobody he got a free pass. Everyone was like, yeah, New York must be more dangerous from Florida.
No, the opposite.
So it's like, it is, it's, it's it's it is a fascination with this kind of violence, coupled with a set of like completely unexamined assumptions about what's dangerous in America, where the danger is or like honestly, like google Jacksonville and then you will never go to Jacksonville again.
That's all gave somebody doggy in a day from Jacksonville. I don't know why Malcolm shooting at Jacksonville this morning, but something happened to Malcolm and jacksonvilleing and then.
We have all from Jacksonville. I like, but I should say I have been to Jacksonville many times. Parts of Jacksonville are quite lovely. But like, the governor of Florida should not be lecturing us about violence, is all I have to say.
Yeah, damn do ball your city caught one this morning? You said that people, uh, people were not with the kind coversation we're not having about guns.
What is that? Is it about the people?
Because I feel like as they always have conversations about gun control, but they never talk about the people who actually own the guns.
There's there's that, there is the well, there's there's all kinds of sort of weird things that we're not talking about. Yeah, we're not talking about I did that episode on trauma centers. We're not talking about the fact that, uh, hospitals, trauma centers should be where the victims of gun violence are. And we have a system right now in this country where we don't always sometimes we do we don't always put medical facilities where they're needed. We put them where
they make the most money. And so that's one thing we don't talk a lot about when we should that it's a huge issue. You know. One of the episodes in the series, I looked at the question of a homicide rate at any A murder rate at any given time is a function of two things. One is how much violence there is, and the second is how good How good is the medical care. Right, If you get shot and you get taken directly to the hospital and
they save your life, you're not a homicide victim. If the same thing happens and you don't get to the hospital time and you die, you are a homicide victim. Right. So a lot depends on how good your hospital system is, and a huge amount if we have situations like in Chicago. They did a study and they showed that if you were black, you traveled a lot further to a trauma center than if you were white. Right, Like, that's something that's the kind of thing you should talk about.
Big something.
You know, you could save a lot of lives if you cite another thing.
We maybe didn't not trying to save. Maybe that's the point.
Yes, it's I think it's in it's in its indifference more than or just like you know, uh, the the amount of oxygen, like I said before, the amount of oxygen that gets taken up by heart obsession with mass shootings when they're the terrible thing, but they are they are so a tiny, such a tiny, tiny part of the problem. The idea that that's all we kind of
talk about it about it is weird. But also the idea that you know, in every profession, when anytime, anytime people have an area of specialized knowledge, they're usually invested in making sure that not any kind of you know, if you're a doctor, you're powerfully invested in the idea that you got to go to med school before you
can practice medicine. You don't want any yahoo breck, you know, like you yeah, But gun owners will simultaneously go on and on and on legitimately about how much knowledge you need to handle a gun safely and fired accurately, and at the same time they're like, but everyone should be able to get one at the job of a hat. That's just dumb. It should be the gun owners who are supporting restrictions around gun use, because they're the ones who are aware of how legitimately difficult it is to
handle a gun safely and appropriately. I don't get it. I don't understand why gun control isn't being pushed by gun lovers, right. You know. It's like I said, like I you know, I'm a big runner. I'm the last person who says everyone should run and it's hard. Take it seriously. You know what you're doing. You gotta, like, you know, prepare for it. I don't say you have a right to everyone should have a right to run ten miles in the morning.
Maybe gun levels are in a bubble because they know how to use their guns. They you know, they go to the gun range all the time. People around them probably know how to use their gun and go to the gun range when their mind, they're just assuming if you have a gun, you know how to use it, you know how.
I think that's probably maybe They's what I spent one of the episodes. I go down to North Carolina and I hang out with this guy, Greg Wallace, who's a He said, he loves guns. He's a just competitive shooting and gave me a kind of we fired assault rifle and he gave me a tutorial on how to do it. And just from spending an afternoon with him. That's the thing I came away from. It's like you need it's hard.
There's a lot of and you know the amount of caution he took, Like when I when I picked up the assault rifle and picked up the wrong way, he was, you know, like, don't you know? Like it was it was a real kind of Uh it was. It was fascinating just to see how in their own little world they're super gotious around.
How do you feelhen you fight that thing though? How'd you feel? Malcolm? Huh? You get a rush?
Jesus did I get a rush? The first time I've ever picked up a gun in my life?
Yeah, first time.
First time in a shooting range in rural North Carolina, an ar fifteen And uh I felt. First of all, I was, it's really loud. You had a head I had, I had things on, but it was still loud. It was creepy at first. And then you with that you can't help it.
You get a little rush.
Yeah.
It's like these things are big and heavy. Like the idea that you have in your hands, something that you could kill someone with is just strange.
If he's never held a gun, have you have? I shot a gun. Yeah.
I never shot an the sault rifle though, like an AAR fifteen or anything like that.
Yeah, but you know handgun, yeah, like.
A little like a lower one, the lower part. I mean we got a three fifty seven of the house on the glock of the house. Oh okay, what what are your thoughts on assault rifles now after using one?
Well, I did that episode and it was the one that got the most male basically saying I think salt rifle bands are a dumb idea, and they're dumb because they're not actually banning assault rifles. Assaut rifle is a kind of platform, and what assaut rifle bands do is identify if you accessorize your gun with a certain number of cosmetic things. We think that's bad and we want to ban them, but they it's a semi automatic rifle
with a large magazine. Those are you know, those are until you can Still they're still legal in many states asault rifle bands. So it's like kind of weird that why are we identifying a class of weapons because they look ugly and saying we should. But the other thing is like it's the amount of damage they can do, but we're not. We're not banning so rifles. Rifles are are very you know, they're semi automatic rifles are a
very lethal weapon. We're not banning semi auomatic rifles. Within assault rifle ban we're banning a tiny subcategory that happened to have a certain number of cosmetic features that we don't like. So it's like we're not solving the problem. And then I sat down with this trauma surgeon in DC who had studied mass shootings and it's like, if that's what's what's you're worried about, is mass shootings? Actually the most lethal weapon used in mass shootings is are handguns,
because a handgun gets into the grizzly. But you within assault rifle, you shoot once the person goes down, and because it's boom right then with a handgun, you shoot once and sometimes person doesn't go down, so you're more likely to be shot twice. You're shot by a handgun and the guy gets up closer and shoots you a second time, and he is more likely to kill you.
So you're more likely to die from a handgun than a sult rifle in a mass shooting, which just says, by the way, which is a all we're saying is guns are dangerous, they're used in different ways, and to have as a to spend all of our time and energy trying to remove one tiny subcategory of guns from the equation and the hopes is going to change things. It's just dumb. It's just like the problem is much
bigger than that. You're not solving it by by by by, you know, by taking some pair of scissors to one page of the gun manual.
Right, So what is the solutions then? How to kind of control of the America gets lit broken out of?
We think that, Yeah, he's from cannabis, so he can't.
When I talked to that guy at Della Price in the last the last of the episodes, which by the way, one of the most so I sat with. So he's a guy, he's in his thirties, big football big, incredibly moving and powerful and thoughtful guy.
Just say he's sexy, Malcolm. First of all, Malcolm is sexy. I talked it is a big sexy.
I knew, I knew. I just knew what I was like, I'm gonna describe. I'm just going to get in trouble. Uh the he is he a handsome man? Yes, he is a handsome man, charle man, if that's what you're asking,
and he so. My point is he's talking about one of the things he does is he goes into elementary and middle schools in the South Chicago hands out first responder kids, teaches the kids how to minister first eight if the first because it's a reality, No terrible, that kind of I mean, it's just what he was describing that,
it's just like it's so heartbreaking and children. What he would say is and what he talked about it is, you know, a lot of gun violence is kids, is disputes between young people who don't know how to resolve their disputes peaceably. And you have to teach people a kind of an emotional vocabulary that allows them to have an argument without pulling a gun.
But that's a whole other thing for us.
Serious and now you're talking about mental health and social remoa learning and.
Maybe if we just maybe if we just put the gun control conversation on hold and said, all right, we'll get back to this when the time comes. It's it's important, but it's not as important as what you're just talking about. Is you've got kids. You know, Little Price was talking about on in the neighborhoods where he works. It's you know, we're talking about multi generational beefs, like you shot my cousin,
so I shot your brother. You know, like you have to unravel that cycle, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of care and a lot of attention. And you know, if we just focused on trying to unravel that for a while and see if we make any headway, that strikes me as being a really productive way to kind of tact the problem.
Yeah, you know, why do that makes so much sense?
It makes so much sense because you probably can get people to move on that faster than you ever will get them to move on actual gun control.
Yeah.
I don't see any reason why people on both sides of the political fence shouldn't couldn't rally around around that. Like why do we pick a we we choose a fight that we know is the most divisive fight we can possibly have, and that has zero chance of getting anywhere. We're not getting anywhere with the court we have with gun control unhappy, So like, why do we just bang our heads against the wall. Why don't we do something that would have more effective?
Can I pivot a little bit if you don't want to talk about it, I understand, But you know, the whole Palestine Israel conflict.
Is that? What?
What?
What is?
What do you think the larger global ramifications of what we're watching right now will be ultimately.
I have I have no idea.
I mean, it's so beyond my that's a that's not something that I've ever It's just all I All I know is that it's heartbreaking, that's allid Yeah, definitely.
Absolutely, six part series.
Tell us what you got a book?
You're still working on the next book too?
Well, now I've I'm I'm working. I put my my, my, uh Tom Bradley book on hold and which turned into it turned into a book about anger and all this kind of stuff.
So it's not about Tom Bradley anymore.
Well, I got interested in so it is. But what I got really interested in.
Is is is I got interested in when what strategies are available to the angry? Because it was it turned into this book about what it meant to be black in if you lived in Los Angeles in the thirties and forties, and this group of black guys.
Who all go to U c.
L A.
In the thirties Tom Bradley, Jackie Robinson, Wally Strode, a bunch of people who go on to have really big career. Was it was a huge actor in Hollywood, a guy named Washington who was a big NFL player. And they're like the only black people on the UCLA campus. They all live in South Central and they all have different strategies for dealing with the fact. You know, they were all on the UCLA football team and they played the big game was against u USC and they got hung
in it. Basically, a US fraternity on the USC campus has a mock lynching the black players on the UCLA team and they hang them, hang them in effigy outside the frat just before the big game between you see, this is what's going on in their lives, right and I turned I've turned the book into an examination of what are the strategies available to you if you're in
that kind of situation. They're angry, right as you would be if you grew up in La Black in the nineteen thirties, and each of them, of the people I'm profiling, has a different strategy for dealing with that anger. You know, there's a one path is confrontation. I just start shouting. And there's a woman living in ceuth Citul. It's an incredible woman living in South Central who I write about. Who's that's her? That's what she does. She just stands
up and starts shouting until people. And then the other path is the Tom Bradley path, where you take all of your anger and you button it up. And he never This is a man, you know, first black mayor of Los Angeles endures the most unspeakable kind of experienced racist experiences trying to come to political power in LA and never once you know, let's on that he's been affected by it. I mean, he just is this serene.
And that's another strategy is you just pretend it doesn't exist, right, you turn yourself into someone else that's not good.
You're suppressing it.
Well, they're all. What I'm interested in is there's no perfect strategy. There's each strategy has a set of of of costs and benefits and it's up to the person to just to to figure out what the right right. And you know, everyone, not everyone, you guys have all you've all done this in your life, right. You have sat down on some level, maybe not consciously, but you've sat down and you've figured out how am I going
to deal with the baggage I'm carrying? Right? And you've made compromises that you know, to yourself to those around you. You have other times you've said, I'm not going to compromise, I'm going to be right. That's the I want to describe that process because it strikes me as being anyone who has ever been on the wrong side of a power equation has had to go through that process in everyone right, and I want to figure out I want to kind of write a kind of guidebook to how you do that.
But you know what you said, you talked to any psychiatrists and therapists, because before I started going to therapy, I would just either suppressed like those emotions or conformed, you know, in a lot of cases. And that was actually a big life lesson that I learned dealing with an individual like yo. I'm never compromising myself for anyone. So did you talk to any psychiatrist and therapists.
On people that did the work I mean on that book, I'm only halfway okay, So I'm getting yeah, I'm getting I'm I'm right now. I'm I'm just doing the part where I'm describing the like I have a whole chapter on the the whole group of there's a whole group of comics, comedians living in South Central in the thirties and forties and who are allowed to be in movies in LA only of course, if they conformed to a
certain right. There's the guy Jack Benny's sidekick what's his name, I've forgotten, who has to play this kind of stupid butler, right, but he has little opportunities to kind of fight back, but he has to. That's those are the rules, and you want.
To be and yeah, you.
Got to that. That kind of women. Eddie Anderson, Eddie have a whole thing, a whole chapter on Eddie Anderson, who fascinating, Yeah, fascinating. He's the mayor of Central Avenue. He's this huge figure in South central the UH in
the thirties and forties. And know, he's one of the most he might be one of the most famous black men in America in if you talked to us, if you went to a white person from Iowa in nineteen forty seven and said, you know, name three black people, he would be one of them, to be him and Joe Louis and yeah, you know. So he's a huge figure. We've forgotten now it's a huge But so I tell his one of the chapters about his extraordinary story.
That's interesting because some people will say that that hasn't changed. Like you still if you're black, you still have to play a certain role, whether it's a hip hop movies or whatever in order to have success.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that's absolutely well.
Listen, I know Malcolm Glawell has to leave the six part series. Revision is History is out right now. I love Revision History. I haven't gotten a chance to listen to the six part series, but I reference your McDonald's episode quite often, you know, quite often. But thank you for coming, my brother, thank you, thank you so much. It's Malcolm Gladwell.
It's the Breakfast Club.
Wake that answer up in the morning.
Breakfast Club.