John McWhorter & Jens Ludwig – The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
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Show Notes
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Video Links
0:00 How Jens got interested in American gun violence
2:45 What’s “unexpected” about the origins of gun violence?
5:29 Race and the culture of gun violence
9:30 Ground News ad
11:20 Are high rates of gun violence a cultural issue or an equilibrium?
17:09 Is urban gun violence the result of rational behavior?
24:34 The link between Kahnemanian “fast thinking” and violent conflict
36:46 Are gun violence interruptions scalable?
40:52 The role of urban design in reducing crime and violence
47:31 Jens: Gang-motivated crime may not account for as much violence as its seems
50:43 Rehabilitating “Broken Windows”
53:47 Jens’s “pathological pragmatism”
Recorded June 13, 2025
Links and Readings
Jens’s new book, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow
William Julius Williams’s book, Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Social Policy
Jane Jacobs’s book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Melissa Kearney’s book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind
George Kelling and James Q. Wilson’s classic Atlantic article, “Broken Windows”
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