John McWhorter & Jens Ludwig – The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence

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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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