Luigi Mangione - Part Two: On Pain of Death | #432

Summary

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RedHanded Podcast #432

Luigi Mangione – Part Two: On Pain of Death
Original Release: January 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this detailed and reflective episode, Hannah and Sam complete their two-part exploration of the Luigi Mangione case, focusing on his personal history, psychological profile, the events leading to his shocking vigilante killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the implications for society. The hosts cut through sensationalism and meme-fueled mythologizing to probe at the core motivations and contradictions of Mangione, his complex psyche, and the dangerous potential of turning societal grievance into violence.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Demystifying Luigi Mangione: Moving beyond the viral memes and public adulation to dissect his real motives and history.
• Personal History and Radicalisation: Tracing Mangione’s privileged upbringing, health struggles, intellectual pursuits, and the steps that led him from high-achieving tech grad to ideologically driven assassin.
• Vigilantism and Hero Worship: Examining public response, the ethics of violence for a cause, and the risks of glamorizing such figures.
• The Psychology of Extremism: A critical look at Mangione’s narcissism, alienation, entitlement, and need for meaning.
• Legal and Social Fallout: Discussing the trial, legal defenses, and the broader societal impact.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Luigi Mangione’s Early Life and Family Background

[02:09–05:18]

• Born into a successful Italian-American family in Baltimore, known for philanthropy and business success.
• Academic and extracurricular star at elite schools; engaged, curious, but, according to some, prone to darker moods.
• Intellectual and ambitious: "He was focused and reserved, impatient and ambitious." (Hannah, 04:41)

2. Tech, Contradictions, and Societal Critique

[06:08–07:53]

• Early obsession with technology, but a complex, even critical relationship with tech and social media.
• Admired anti-tech thinkers like Jonathan Haidt and referenced Ted Kaczynski; Mangione expressed belief that deleting social media “would probably be better for society” (Hannah, 07:22).
• Manifested “trad tech” ideals—wanting to hack life efficiency while decrying tech’s social effects.

3. Health Struggles and Alienation

[09:57–13:22]

• Lived with “crippling spine condition” (spondylolisthesis) resulting in chronic pain.
• No direct connection to universal healthcare, but highly sensitized to healthcare system failures through lived experience.
• Ongoing isolation, referencing brain fog and romantic frustration; described himself as always obsessed with “efficiency.”

4. Career, Purpose, and Need for Meaning

[15:46–16:42]

• Left a “mind-numbingly boring” tech job to live in Hawaii, searching for meaning.
• Embedded with “culty” co-living Surf Break community; started book clubs including one on the Unabomber’s manifesto.
• Parallels made to “cult joiners” seeking big, life-anchoring causes:

“The people who join cults…want to make their mark, they want to make a difference. They don’t know how.” (Hannah, 15:46)

5. Radicalisation Abroad

[17:52–32:05]

• Lived a backpacker fantasy, traveling Asia, making eclectic friends, and journaling.
• Developed relationships with niche authors and thinkers (e.g., Goinda Bogle and Jash Dhulani); described as alienated, “looking for somewhere to channel his energy” (Sam, 29:05).
• By August 2024, journaled:

“I finally feel confident about what I will do. The details are finally coming together.” (Hannah quoting Mangione, 32:05)

6. Manifesto, Motive, and Targeting UnitedHealthcare

[32:05–34:15]

• Mangione’s writings fixated on the “suffocating power of corporate greed” and specifically UnitedHealthcare as “insurance. It checks every box.”
• Considered another target, cryptically “KMD,” but rejected it for being “unjustified” and “unhelpful.”
• Anticipated the impact: “What do you do? You whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean counter convention. It’s targeted, precise and doesn’t risk innocence. Most importantly, the point becomes self-evident.” (Sam quoting Mangione, 34:15)

7. Descent into Isolation—Leading to the Crime

[35:27–36:28]

• In final months, cut off ties with all friends and family, becoming “single-minded and focused.”
• Police identified him with mother’s input after the shooting.

8. Public & Legal Reaction; Psychology

[36:28–44:51]

• Mangione seen by some as a “martyr” or hero; others horrified.
• Psychological analysis: not overtly “insane” but highly narcissistic, entitled, and convinced of his righteousness:

“He believed he could exact justice in a way others were too weak or cowardly to.” (Hannah, 36:55)

• Debate: Is his violence “logical” or unforgivable? Both hosts stress the danger of excusing vigilantism, even for a sympathetic cause.
• Discussed the “halo effect” of his attractiveness and its impact on public leniency.

9. The Ethics and Risks of Glorifying Violent Protest

[55:01–56:46]

• The case risks providing a blueprint to others with grievances:

“If you glorify one killer, somebody else watching will be like, oh, that could be me.” (Hannah, 55:37)

• Emphasize that while grievances may be legitimate, violence is not.

10. Legal Proceedings & Potential Defenses

[56:46–67:26]

• Outlines legal hurdles: potential insanity plea (unlikely), diminished capacity due to pain, or “necessity defense”—but all are likely weak due to evidence of premeditation.
• Jury nullification is a (very slim) possibility, given the case’s political charge.
• Details on dropped terrorism charge and ongoing legal wrangles.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mangione’s sense of destiny & self-importance:

  “I have no doubt that this is right and justified. I’m glad in a way that I’ve procrastinated because it’s allowed me to learn more about UHC ... The target is insurance. It checks every box.” (Hannah, quoting manifesto, 32:05)

• Narcissism as motive:

  “He believed he could exact justice in a way that others were too weak or too cowardly to, as he himself says in his manifesto: ‘Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.’” (Hannah, 36:55)

• Ethical warning:

  “It’s crucial with such crimes that they are not excused or normalized, let alone glamorized or venerated.” (Hannah, 68:17)

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Timeline of Critical Segments (Timestamps)

• Luigi’s Family and Schooling: [02:09–05:18]
• His Views on Tech & Contradictions: [06:08–07:53]
• Chronic Pain & Healthcare Connection: [09:57–13:22]
• Search for Purpose and Radicalisation Abroad: [15:46–32:05]
• The Manifesto & Decision: [32:05–34:15]
• Psychology Analysis: [36:28–44:51]
• Public Perception, Media, and Attractiveness Discussion: [50:36–51:47]
• Discussion on Glorifying Vigilantes and Risks: [55:01–56:46]
• Legal Context and Proceedings: [56:46–67:26]
• Final Reflections and Ethical Considerations: [68:17–68:53]

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Conclusion

Hannah and Sam provide a nuanced, sometimes darkly humorous but always sharp analysis of Luigi Mangione’s transformation from gifted outsider to vigilantist murderer. They caution against the allure of simple narratives or heroic framing for violent acts, emphasizing empathy for genuine frustration but a hard line against excusing violence. As the trial looms, the hosts leave listeners with a warning about the seductive—but perilous—power of making martyrs out of murderers in the name of public good.

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Transcript

[Hannah]

Foreign. I'm Hannah, and welcome to Red Handed. As we covered last week, there are two things that made this case completely unlike anything we've covered before. First, there were the words on the cartridge casings. Deny, defend, depose. That's when it really looked like Brian Thompson had been targeted as a symbol of monopolistic corporate greed. The second moment that really set this case apart was when the identity of the masked vigilante was revealed to the world. We've covered the astounding public response to him, memes upon memes upon murals upon musicals, and how his identity and message were adapted to fit just about any narrative going. But who is the real Luigi Mangioni? How exactly did he go from promising, well off tech grad to vigilante killer? Let's look at the uncomfortable truth behind the portrait of a selfless revolutionary with chiseled abs.

[Sam]

Somebody's threading his eyebrows in prison. 100%.

[Hannah]

I just. I've never seen anything like it. I'm just like. I haven't had my eyebrows done since my wedding. And I've also had to stop using, like, any. Any things on them because I was, like, getting some reactions and this is it. This is the most.

[Sam]

Yes, but you are an irritatingly hairless person.

[Hannah]

But thing is, in some ways, it's fun to be quite hairless. Like, I can make a wax last, like, six. Six weeks, two months, easy. But in other ways, it will give you the wispiest eyebrows and eyelashes you ever did see. Unfortunately, a small price to pay.

[Sam]

Before I had laser hair removal, 90% of my life was taken up by removing hairs from my body.

[Hannah]

Yes. See, I literally have barely any hair on my body. It's.

[Sam]

It's furiating. Honestly, it annoys me so much, especially for an Indian.

[Hannah]

Just.

[Sam]

Just very strange, me, hairy as hell, because my ancestors had to survive famines. Okay. That's why I hold fat. And I'm hairy. Anyway, enough about my follicle Follies. Luigi Nicholas Mangione was born in Towson, Maryland, on the 6th of May, 1998. Let's look up the state motto of Maryland. Cause it's either a really good one or a really boring one. I can't remember. Oh. Mm. It's the only one that's in Italian.

[Hannah]

Interesting.

[Sam]

And it means, like, still today. What? Oh, it's the family motto of the Calvert family, who were the proprietors of Maryland. And it means strong deeds, gentle eyebrows. It means strong deeds, gentle words, but you can have that for free. Maryland.

[Hannah]

Nice.

[Sam]

And Luigi's grandfather, Nicholas Mangione was born in a poor first generation immigrant household in downtown Baltimore. Good morning. But through sheer grit and business savvy, Grandad Mangione managed to climb that greasy old pole. And by the end of his life, he had become a successful real estate developer and philanthropist. And from then on, the Mangione family was well known across the state. Luigi's parents built a successful network of nine nursing homes, two country clubs and a radio station all around the Baltimore area. They were obviously well off, but were known across the tight knit Italian community to be good, down to earth people. And by all accounts, young Luigi carried on that legacy. He was known to be engaging, warm and charming, with a knack for making others feel seen and heard.

[Hannah]

So at first, Luigi was sent to a series of Catholic schools and soon he was clearly excelling enough to show real promise. He was sent to an elite all boys prep school called the Gilman School, where tuition is almost $40,000 a year. He was top of his year academically, but he was also sporty too, showing promise in football. That's football with your feet. Cross country and wrestling. He also showed an early aptitude for computers and coding, starting both a robot club and a video game designing club while he was still at school. Luigi was definitely intellectually curious, not just wanting to know the answer, but wanting to know why. He read voraciously and also led the conversations at book clubs. He was focused and reserved, impatient and ambitious. Since his arrest, some of his old classmates have talked to the press and claimed that he always had a darker side. One said they remember Luigi having odd episodes and lashing out at people. One friend even said that Luigi frequently told people that he didn't feel emotion the way other people do. Has to be said though, that we've seen a lot of acquaintances comment on his behavior in retrospect, I mean, how reliable they are in these cases. It's always up for debate.

[Sam]

And I also pretty frequently express that I don't feel feelings like other people do.

[Hannah]

And if you do shoot somebody, I.

[Sam]

Will tell them, see you tomorrow.

[Hannah]

So what we do know for sure is that Luigi Mangione was a high achiever. He was the valedictorian when he graduated in 2016, which is the person in a graduating year who performed the best academically. At graduation, the valedictorian has to give a speech to the rest of the year, and Luigi used his to talk about AI and its potential to reshape society. He told his year, when we understand just how fast the rate of human progress is Increasing a revolutionary near future isn't unbelievable, it's actually the only logical conclusion. Be excited for what the future holds for us.

[Sam]

And it is important to note Luigi was obsessed with tech. Probably still is. And he was very online, which he now isn't because he's incarcerated. He wrote long essay like book reviews on his Goodreads page. He was super active on Reddit subscribing to a lot of academic and philosophical subreddits. He was even the kind of Redditor who puts academic citations at the end of his posts.

[Hannah]

But what's interesting to me is that Luigi Mangione is a man of many contradictions. Because a lot of people that he seemed to admire the most, people like Jonathan Haidt and Gerwinda Bogle, more on him and Luigi later, were both people who put forward the idea that social media and technology and many guises in the way it interrupts our daily lives, is a net negative. And just to be clear, I'm also a big fan of these two men and they are in no way extreme or violent or radical or anything. And in later online activity, Mangione himself seems to shift posting that entirely. Deleting social media would probably be better for society. And then there's all his references to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who was driven by a fervent anti tech motive.

[Sam]

Hence the typewriter.

[Hannah]

Yes, exactly. That's why he wrote House fucking Manifesto on a typewriter. So yes, you will see people calling Luigi Mangione's super pro tech. He actually wasn't. He seems to be quite what's often referred to as like trad tech. It's like a confusing combination of like people who want to use tech to like hack their lives, but also recognize how dangerous it is in terms of like social media addiction, porn addiction, etc.

[Sam]

In fact, we can get a lot of insight into Mangione's character from his post history. In one now deleted Reddit post, for example, he talks about a time when he was younger, when he and his friends were sketching their dream homes. He says that everyone drew an elaborate mansion with swimming pools, etc. But his was a small square house with four identically sized rooms. He wrote a place to sleep, a place to be, a place to eat and a place to excrete. It was everything I needed. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Hannah]

God, you'd be. It depends how old he is, but like your 6 year old brings that home. I'm just gonna be like, okay.

[Sam]

I'd be like, well done with Rhyme. And if you don't want anything, then Father Christmas is dead now.

[Hannah]

Great. So easy. Just. I'm going to the Bahamas to excrete. Let's put this up on the fridge.

[Sam]

You're staying here in your little house. Then he goes on to explain. I've always been hyper obsessed with efficiency and I've never been very materialistic. And he said that this obsession with efficiency was the reason that he went on to study engineering. He did an undergrad and a master's with specialities in computer and information science. And he did all of that at the University of Pennsylvania, which is an Ivy League school. The Ivy League is just shorthand for academic excellence and a heavy dose of elitism. Anyway, Luigi arrived at University of Pennsylvania with all of the curiosity and ambition that he'd had at school. He was a sharp and fierce debater. One classmate remembers that he didn't just want to be right, he wanted you to know you were wrong. And this determination came hand in hand with some cast iron opinions about how the world was run. He graduated in 2020. And then we all know what happened. The world shut down.

[Hannah]

Healthcare was suddenly more relevant than ever. Six months into the pandemic, more than 30 million Americans lost health insurance coverage due to losing their jobs. And for Those clinging on, UnitedHealthcare was getting worse. Like we talked about last week, it was hitting headlines for various lawsuits and government probes into its conduct. This fired Luigi up, confirming what he already thought, especially since Luigi had been struggling with his own health issues for years. Since childhood, Luigi Mangione had suffered with a crippling spine condition that I cannot say.

[Sam]

Shall I try?

[Hannah]

Go on.

[Sam]

Spondylolisthesis.

[Hannah]

Thank you. There you go. It's a really painful spinal condition where a vertebra basically slips out of place. Just one of the 33 bones in Luigi Mangione's spine was out of alignment and only by less than half an inch. But spinal conditions are no joke.

[Sam]

Yeah, that's a lot for a spine. Fucking hell.

[Hannah]

Once it's out of whack, that thing is pressing on all sorts of sensitive nerves and causing a lot of pain. He said that it felt like his legs were on fire. So when we say that he had zero personal connections to this case, we mean he had zero personal connections to universal healthcare specifically. What we can speculate is that this condition made him sensitive to the importance of good healthcare.

[Sam]

And everyone seems to be reasonably in agreement that universal healthcare were the worst of the worst.

[Hannah]

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So there's no connection. His family weren't insured by them, but he's picking the worst. Now, of course, the other thing that regular agonising pain can also do is ramp up your emotions. And I think it's fair to say that Luigi Mangione on the pain scale had put up with quite a lot from when he was quite young. And I think it's probably not a stretch to say that it probably contributed somewhat to his development and to his anger.

[Sam]

And we're all idealistic and angry in our 20s.

[Hannah]

Exactly.

[Sam]

I was a fucking idiot.

[Hannah]

Yeah. With anyone who is a person who picks up a gun and goes to the point of killing somebody, lots of people feel those frustrations, feel those anger, but it's what sets you apart when you're willing to take violent action. So these are kind of things we're talking about in terms of like the many, many sort of societal and personal issues that probably fed into Luigi Mangioni doing what he did. So, yes, there's also some tabloidy news sources that have quoted old acquaintances of Luigi's saying that his condition had also stopped him from having a romantic or physical relationship. But one of those sources is his old landlord who's like, I don't know. And I mean old landlord. Like, it's not massively convincing, but it is true that there is no record of him ever having a girlfriend. And there are some old Instagram comments where he expresses his frustrations at being single. And there were also likes that he had made on posts that were talking about like matchmaking services rather than dating apps. So again, you're seeing that sort of anti tech being used in a way that depletes society. But he believes there's an efficient way tech can be used to better society.

[Sam]

Right. So yes, and if he ever gets out, that is not going to be a problem ever again.

[Hannah]

Quite so. The other thing people love to quote is that Luigi writes a lot about having brain fog. And yeah, I've seen a lot of different takes on this. People sort of ascribing this to various different conditions, whatever. People also putting it down to just being like, we all have brain fog. I don't know, it could hint at some sort of unhinged psychopathic rage, I'm not sure. But what we do know is that other killers have also cited this kind of thing. Brian Kohberger being somebody who immediately jumps to mind for me, who talked about kind of brain or visual snow or like a brain fog that he had. Again, we'll come on to the psychology of Luigi Mangioni later. In this episode. But for now, let's stick to the timeline.

[Sam]

I also think with Brain Fog, it's something that everybody experiences to an extent. And obviously people only know things in relative to themselves. So what my impression of Brain Fog is, is the only thing I know, whereas there are people for which it is entirely debilitating. But of course I only think that it's because it's the same word I associate it with. Just having to stare at the wall for a bit doesn't necessarily mean it's the same for everybody, you know.

[Hannah]

And I wonder if it was an acquired thing for him because he's obviously been such a high achiever his whole life that there's obviously something there that's frustrating him, that's slowing him down, that's making him less efficient as he would like to.

[Sam]

While still in lockdown, Luigi started a robotics internship, which he did remotely. Obviously after this internship he interned at Phyrexis Games, where he worked on the video game Civilization 6. But he was still directionless. He had all the brains, connections and opportunities to go far in practically any industry he wanted. He was in a family of achievers. His two older sisters are a doctor and a successful artist. And his cousin Nino Mangioni is a Republican state legislator for Maryland. Thing is, Luigi wrestled with his conscience throughout his life. He seemed obsessed with the idea of putting his life to good use.

[Hannah]

And something I want to point out here is the whole time I was like reading about this case, the thing that really struck me was how similar it is, or how similar his profile is to people who join cults, because it's somebody we've talked about before when we've done cults, particularly when we did our short lived Sinister Society series over on Spotify. But the idea of like people who join cults being like the dredges of society being like a total nonsense, and how actually people who join cults are people who become radicalized into that kind of cult like way of thinking because they want their life to mean something. They know they can achieve something. They want to make their mark, they want to make a difference. They don't know how. And they look for somebody to give them the answers and then that's how they fall in. I think. Luigi Mangioni was struggling a lot with feeling like his life was going to amount to being inadequate, when he believed that he could achieve a lot more.

[Sam]

And he got a job eventually as a data engineer at Truecar, an online car buying platform. But he found it all quite hollow. So he quit. In early 2023, telling a friend that it paid well, but it was mind numbingly boring. So he packed up and moved to Hawaii. The idea was to get away, surf a bit, get stronger and healthier, and figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, which is an extraordinarily privileged thing to be able to do. So he moved into a co living space just outside Honolulu called Surf Break. It's a little culty, but in a chill, surfer way. Its members are referred to as a family, and its mission statement is to leave things better than you found them. Luigi thrived there like he thrived everywhere. He made friends, he organised dinners and events and stuff. And he started a book club focusing on social issues. And one of those chosen texts was the Unabomber Manifesto. And I think if I ended up, like, if I could surf, it really wouldn't take me very long to end up somewhere like that.

[Hannah]

Didn't you go to one of those places for a bit, though? And you were like, it was awful. I don't want to out it.

[Sam]

Oh, no. That was just a group of really obnoxious people.

[Hannah]

Oh, okay, okay.

[Sam]

It wasn't like a co living space.

[Hannah]

Okay.

[Sam]

There was just multiple people doing the same thing in a very small and boring town. But I think if someone whipped out the Unabomb Manifesto, even I would have to be like, I gotta go. I can see where this is going, and it's nowhere good.

[Hannah]

Homer into the bushes, surf into the.

[Sam]

Sunset, and are beaten by a shark.

[Hannah]

Yeah, get me out of there.

[Sam]

As God intended. And Surf Break did have a few dropouts after that particular book club meeting. Other than that, though, Luigi hiked, Luigi worked out, and Luigi went rock climbing. And his friend Josiah Ryan said Luigi was just widely considered to be a great guy. There was no sign that might point to these alleged crimes they're saying he committed.

[Hannah]

But it wasn't all shaka signs and luaus. In mid 2023, while out surfing, Luigi experienced his first sciatica, an intense pain. Pain that shoots down your sciatic nerve. Then a few weeks later, he slipped on a piece of paper and it did something very serious to his back. He couldn't use his right leg for a week. From then on, his back pain was inescapable. His hips locked up and occasionally went numb. He wrote on Reddit about a near constant burning twitching in both ankles and calves, and he said, I'm terrified of the implications. He suffered with this increased pain for more than a year. And like a lot of people who Suffer with debilitating back pain. Luigi Mangioni was basically putting off surgery because back surgery is serious business. I think it's one of the types of surgery that has the sort of lowest rates of success. Even if you are getting the best care possible and not getting like fucking Dr. Deft, it's a very tricky part of the body to work on. And I remember my dad had really bad sciatica and they were just like, you need surgery. And he actually cured it with yoga, of all things, which I was fully like, this is never going to work. But he's completely fine now. And I think that's why Luigi Mangioni is trying to do things like the surfing. He's very obsessed with fitness because he thinks, I can fix this without the surgery. But eventually he realizes that he can't put it off any longer and he has to do it. So on the 4th of July 2023, he had three screws inserted into his spine, fusing the funky vertebra with the other two so that it stayed in place.

[Sam]

Like jfk.

[Hannah]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam]

Luigi posted his recovery journey on Reddit, sharing advice to those in similar situations. And the surgery was a massive success. He said that before he thought he was destined to chronic pain and a desk job for the rest of his life. But within a week, he wrote that he was on literally zero pain meds and he'd returned to an athletic life. And not long after, at the beginning of 2024, he set off on his gap year backpacker fantasy and he really drank the World Traveller flavoured. He only took what he could fit in a tiny backpack and posted the following slightly cringe traveller sentiment on There is a sense of weightlessness, freedom and self sufficiency that accompanies one bag travel without luggage. There is a very real sense of travelling as an adventurer rather than a tourist. You are a Taurus.

[Hannah]

Yes. Now, call me crazy, and I might be a bit crazy because I've been taking all these injections leading up to the surgery, but the other day I was like, maybe I should just, you know, take my laptop and a mic and I could go travel the world and I can still do my job because I can park up anywhere that has Internet and find a quiet room and do what I need to. Why don't I do that? And then I was like, because of people like this that I would have to meet along the way.

[Sam]

Oh, yeah.

[Hannah]

And that was like, that was the end of that dream.

[Sam]

Yeah, just, I'm not a very, like, I'm not a globetrotter I like to find the places I like and stay there.

[Hannah]

Okay. Fair.

[Sam]

I've never done the like multi country, big trip.

[Hannah]

Yeah, I did it and it was enough. Yeah, it was enough for me. And I remember when I came back from my big like year travel, which was like in my mid-20s, and when I came back I applied for the last job I had before this and my boss was like really hesitant to hire me because he was like, the only thing holding me back is that I'm scared. You've just come back from a year of traveling, you're going to take this job because you're broke. And then like six months in you're going to be like, nah, I need to be back out on the road. And I was like, I promise you, I am so done with all the fucking flip flop wearing seashell necklace wearing fucking. Let me read your tea leaf bullshit. People that I met, I was just like. And dirty. Dirty. I'm just like, they have showers in this country. This hostel is gross. But there is a shower. Why are you so dirty? No, no, thank you.

[Sam]

Because they're free.

[Hannah]

Because they're so free. So free.

[Sam]

Yeah, I just. The disdain for the tourist when you are in fact the most irritating kind really gets my back.

[Hannah]

But they talk to the locals, huh?

[Sam]

Oh, but I'm not going to the touristy places. Aren't you? Are you sure? Why don't you take your shell necklace off your ear and it'll whisper to me what a wanker you are. Like, I can't. You're not better. You're not better. You're actually worse. Yes, I saw a TikTok the other day of this girl who's done seven months traveling. She was like, I can't pretend anymore.

[Hannah]

I'm sick of it. I want to go home, honestly. Because one of my big fears is like around having a child potentially. It's like screens and what that will do. And I was like, one of my friends like had a baby and she's like now traveling the world with her baby. And I see this baby like playing on beaches and like, you know, building a little fort wherever. And I was like, that kid's probably going to be really mentally well because of this. But I was like, but I can't, I just can't. So no, I have to stay here and I'll just have to build a fort to keep it from screens at.

[Sam]

Wine Farm in August. And my friend's two kids were running around and the mum had quite obviously had enough and they're Zero screens. And they've done a really good job of keeping it up. And she was like, maybe today's the day that we just watch Cocomelon on our phones. Because this is driving me insane.

[Hannah]

That's what I'm worried. I will have all these good intentions and then I'll just break.

[Sam]

It's hard, man.

[Hannah]

As soon as I need to sleep, because I love sleep.

[Sam]

And they make Cocomelon and Peppa Pig in labs. They test when babies look away and they change it to make them keep watching, which is horrendous. It is effective.

[Hannah]

Apparently. Cocomelon really fucks up kids, though, like speech and development. There's like this list of, like, the most fucked up, like, cartoons you can give your kids. And I don't mean in terms of content, in terms of the way they're edited that just like, fries their brains. It's a fucking nightmare. We're all watching, like, bloody Rosie and Jim.

[Sam]

Anyway. To really drive home his I'm an adventurer, not a tourist stuff, there is a picture of Luigi shortly after he left in a weed shop in Thailand, wearing a wooden necklace and a billabong T shirt. And in true backpacker style, he made more than his fair share of itinerant friends along the way.

[Hannah]

He met a professional poker player in Tokyo. And then in Thailand, he got to know two Americans who were living in Bangkok. Luigi overheard them speaking English and introduced himself. They chatted about such on brand Luigi things as video games, Pokemon and AI. Then the conversation turned to healthcare. One of the two friends mentioned how easy and cheap it was to get an MRI scan in Thailand compared to back home. Luigi was appalled and held forth about healthcare for the rest of the night. Luigi kept in contact with these two American boys for the following few weeks. At one point, he texted them saying he'd been beaten up by seven ladyboys and attached a photo of some scratches on his arm. Another time, he joked that he was going to pay a Japanese Yakuza pimp in porn star Pokemon cards.

[Sam]

I promise you, the Yakuza, we're not playing Pokemon cards. Going nowhere near adventurers, not tourists. I promise you that for a fact.

[Hannah]

At one point in Thailand, Luigi even took himself off to a shooting range. But outside of that minor foreshadowing, in his first few months of traveling, he was taking it pretty easy. It was all backpacker bars, hostels and presumably the occasional game of Uno. Nothing much to show that just nine months after those chilled out Bangkok beers, he would be radicalised enough to gun down an ideological enemy. In the centre of New York.

[Sam]

But then a few things. As we mentioned earlier, Luigi was a big fan of British writer Goinda Boghol and as a part of his substack subscription tier, Luigi got a one on one hour long video call with Bogle himself After he flew back to Japan, he scheduled that call. During their conversation, Pogard remembers Luigi talking quite a lot about how the people around him back home weren't on his wavelength and he also said that he found it very difficult to have meaningful conversations with them. Luigi said that he wanted to find a new community, one that valued logic and self control and he wanted this community to combine all their resources to achieve the greatest positive impact in the world. Obviously it's not what he ended up doing, but it's an important insight into where his head was at at this stage in his travels. Bogot also remembers Luigi's comments on Japan, saying he admired the Japanese sense of honour but felt like so many people were like NPCs which if you're not cool and you don't know what that means, it means non playing characters as in a video game. So people who just follow the rules, no sense of urgency, zero main character energy, they just are. And that obviously bothered Luigi quite a bit. He said that so many people around the world were in danger of becoming mindless slaves. Healthcare barely came up. The conversation was mostly centred on the idea of keeping your agency in a world full of automation, which for a robotics grad like fine feel like they all like that's not that novel. Bogot, however, said that he came away from this conversation impressed. He found Luigi to be polite, thoughtful, curious and kind. But he also saw a loneliness, an alienation from modern life. Burgol is adamant that there was no tinge of violence in Luigi's comments that day. He just came across a bit lost, looking for somewhere to channel his energy.

[Hannah]

Soon after that, Luigi sent a voice note to a friend saying I think I want to stay here for like a month and just meditate whole spring and do some writing. After some time in Osaka, he disappeared into the Nara mountains. On his 26th birthday, 6th May 2024, he checked into a tiny guest house in Tenkawa at the base of Mount Omini. And there, in another voice note, Luigi Mangione told a friend he wanted to Zen out and do some Buddha. According to other guests, he followed through on this plan. He was never seen with screens or devices, just always reading, writing in his journal and dipping in the onsen.

[Sam]

Someone should have given him cocomelon on A phone.

[Hannah]

So as for what he was writing in his journal, we'll take a look inside that all important notebook. Very soon.

[Sam]

When he was finished quote unquote doing some Buddha, Luigi went to India. He travelled there especially to meet a writer called Jash Dhulani. Dhulani's then unpublished book hit reverse. New ideas from old books had really got through to Luigi. In the book, Delany encourages the reader to take risks in pursuit of beauty. Obviously he suggests it in a non violent way. The average person, if they wanted to get a book they liked published, they may subscribe to a fundraiser or spread the word in their community. But Luigi is not that guy. Instead he bought 400 copies and went to India to deliver his feedback to the author in person. After about six months bouncing through Asia, Luigi returned to the States in July 2024. He went straight to San Francisco and settled there. He stopped posting online on his known accounts. At least he bought his fake ID and he cut ties with most of his friends and family. But thanks to his journal, we can pick up the thread from there. The idea was crystallising and it had been for some time. On August 15th he wrote I finally feel confident about what I will do. The details are finally coming together.

[Hannah]

Over the six months he was away, Luigi Mangione had been writing more and more about the problems he saw with society. He wrote about the toll of social media and the dangers of falling birth rates. But most of all, he wrote about the suffocating power of corporate greed. In that same entry that Hannah just quoted, he I feel confident about what I will do. I don't feel any doubt about whether it's right or justified. I'm glad in a way that I've procrastinated because it's allowed me to learn more about UHC UnitedHealthcare. The target is insurance. It checks every box. And again, I know I said we'll talk about psychology later. I just want people to remember some of these things. Like when he's talking about not being able to find anybody who's on the same wavelength as him, kind of that everyone else is a sort of sheeple. They have no agency, they're just ncps. And then this thing here about I have no doubt that this is right and justified. There is no question in his mind about what he is about to do. That level of like certainty. He's reasoned himself into a very extreme position. So yes, continuing on with what else is in the manifesto because it's really important here to point out that he also wrote about another potential target that he was considering, which he only ever refers to as kmd. But he called this potential hit off because he said it would have been an unjustified catastrophe that would have been perceived mostly as sick, but more importantly, unhelpful would do nothing to spread awareness, improve people's lives. Again, remember that quote? And as far as we know, nobody really seems to know what KMD is or who KMD is. I don't know. But I think the reason he wrote KMD off is important because he's clearly very concerned with how his actions would be perceived by the wider public because he writes it off saying it would be mostly perceived as sick.

[Sam]

Shortly after he had decided on United Healthcare, he wrote another passage and he got specific. What do you do? You whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean counter convention. It's targeted, precise and doesn't risk innocence. Most importantly, the point becomes self evident. The point is made in the news headline. He said that it would encourage reasonable, acceptable discussion and it might cause investors to leave the company. Both of which happened in October. Luigi called the UHC investor conference a true windfall and said it embodied everything wrong with our healthcare system. So it's worth remembering these quotes when it comes to a conversation about premeditation. All of that was written two months before the shooting. In the last three months before December 4, Luigi disappeared into his own head. The support network he usually surrounded himself with had always kept him grounded. But then by this time he had already decided that they could never be on his wavelength. He became single minded and focused and in November, he got himself a gun. By this stage, he'd totally withdrawn from friends and from family. His replies to the few that he did keep in touch with grew increasingly distant and cold. And eventually he stopped replying altogether. By November, his family hadn't heard from him for 140 days. His mother had even filed a missing persons report with the San Francisco police after the shooting on December 4, San Francisco police received the suspect photo taken at the hostel check in desk and they thought it looked just like their missing person. So they asked his mother. She didn't say it was him, but when they asked if it was something she could see him doing, she said yes.

[Hannah]

Luigi's mother, like his friends, only found out the truth when his face was splashed across every news outlet in the country. Many friends say they were absolutely flawed, finding it impossible to connect this steely faced killer with their breezy, sociable friend. But maybe he was always there. An internal police report about the manifesto said he likely views himself as a hero of sorts, who had finally decided to act upon such injustices. And I would have to agree. So let's talk about the psychology of Luigi Magione. He's not mentally ill, I don't think, in a traditional sense. I don't think he was delusional or suffering from some sort of psychotic break during the act. Instead, his motivations seem to me to be born of a mix of ideology, entitlement, a sense of righteousness, a grandiose sense of self and narcissism, exacerbated, of course by alienation, radicalisation, isolation, rage. But to me, it's Mangione's narcissism that I think played a significant role in his decision to take the law into his own hands. He believed he could exact justice in a way that others were too weak or too cowardly to, as he himself says in his manifesto. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty, it being what he believes needs to be done.

[Sam]

A large percentage of the population in the US has major grievances with the current healthcare system, as we've discussed at length. So Luigi's statements about this being his motive naturally resonated with millions of people. But when most people are faced with injustice, they try and resolve it legally and peacefully. But not Mangione. He sees himself as a hero, a crusader, the one who's going to do the thing that nobody else is going to do.

[Hannah]

Even the way he says in some of his notes in the book about, once it's done, then there can be a reasonable, acceptable discussion that you people, that everybody else can take part in. I will do what needs to be done and then you can pick it up from there, because that's what you're capable of. This is my purpose, to deliver the catalyst to do that.

[Sam]

Is he wrong?

[Hannah]

Well, I mean, is it going to. It's not whether he's right or wrong. It's about the psychology of a person who believes that's their purpose.

[Sam]

Yes. No, I take that point.

[Hannah]

And that's a dangerous perspective, is my argument.

[Sam]

Yeah, I can see. Yes, I agree with you. But in terms of logic, healthcare is being discussed more than ever. People do have stronger opinions than ever. So he was kind of right. Doesn't make it the right thing to do. He was logically correct.

[Hannah]

Absolutely. And that's why, you know, I agree that millions of people. That's why he chose it. That's actually why I'm saying that's why he chose it. As we'll kind of go on to discuss. I think it's interesting to me that while conversations with Helca come up every now and then, it's not like the thing he rails about his entire life. He actually talks, if you look at his notebooks, way more about tech, way more about the plight of social media on like humanity, etc. Even with that conversation with Gowinda Bogle, he doesn't really talk about healthcare at all. I think it was a very calculated decision to pick the target he picked and to pick something that he knew was gonna resonate with the most people possible. Because who was kmd? What else was he angry about? But did he think, oh, if I shoot that person, I'm probably not gonna get as much love as I will if I shoot Brian Thompson.

[Sam]

That's true. That's a good point. I also can see, however, the utter frustration because as you say, the avenues that are available to people who are begrieved don't work either. So I can understand the unbearable boiling point frustration of there's nothing I can do and no one's going to help and it's never going to change and no one cares about me totally. So I can see how that feeling, which is pretty universal when it comes to healthcare in the U.S. i can see how for someone who's already set up in the way he is can be translated into what he went to do and how he justifies it to himself and how millions of people justify it as being a virtuous thing to do.

[Hannah]

And I can totally also see that perspective. I think from my way of thinking about it, is if we take healthcare out of the equation, insert some other topic or some other social, cultural, political issue that leaves a group of people feeling marginalized, maybe millions and millions of people feeling marginalized. For example, if we were to take like immigration in this country, there are large swathes of people in this country who feel that that is marginalizing them. And if we had somebody who rose up in that and was like, I will go and shoot XYZ person who I believe is responsible for this, let's not even say a politician, because he doesn't shoot a politician. Let's say somebody else, a journalist or somebody or the head of a charity who he believes has been fundamental in campaigning for increased mass immigration or whatever, then I feel like while I would sympathize with their feelings at how their lives have been impacted by that and their feeling of helplessness, feeling like I voted every time, what else can I do? I feel totally powerless that's the thing is then when you take it into your own hands to decide who can be executed to start a conversation, do the ends justify the means? And I know what you're saying. You're not saying it does or you're saying that's what happened. But the point of helplessness and anger and frustration I totally agree with. I wonder if people would feel the same if it was a different topic, but there were still lots of people who felt marginalized by it.

[Sam]

I think why it's difficult to swap it out for something else and also why he picked it. As to your argument is that it affects the most people and it's broken because of profiteering. It's not broken for any other reason.

[Hannah]

I would argue immigration also is. But I take your point.

[Sam]

I would argue not quite in the same way because there aren't three private companies that run immigration in the U.S.

[Hannah]

I mean, I would say it's run by profiteering governments who know that they are business owners who will benefit from it.

[Sam]

See, yes, I think that's why it's not quite the same. There's a step in between. I agree with you that there absolutely are, you know, entirely corrupt government systems that absolutely feed into private industry. Anyway, the difference with healthcare in the US is everyone knows and it's in your face and there's nothing you can do about it.

[Hannah]

And that's why I think absolutely he chose healthcare.

[Sam]

I agree with you there.

[Hannah]

Because he knows he's not a stupid person and there isn't a long. Yes, he's got his back problem, but the reason he didn't have the surgery wasn't because he couldn't afford it or he wasn't insured. He literally didn't want to have the surgery because he was scared of the possible side effects, which was a smart thing to do. He tried to fix it in a holistic way, but when he had it, he was fine. He benefited from it. Anyway, I don't disagree with anything you're saying. I'm simply just pointing out that the dangers of, I guess people taking things into their own hands, which we talk about all the time on this show.

[Sam]

And when it comes to narcissists, validating them is always quite dangerous.

[Hannah]

And yeah, again, I know we've made this point, but just to sort of like really fine tune it, I think that the choice Mangione made to go after a healthcare CEO and the worst of the worst, the CEO of a company that amongst the top three was embroiled in the most lawsuits that had the highest decline rate because if you think the industry average is 1 in 10, but United's was 1 in 3, that is significantly more. None of this was an accident. He did it because he knew it would be widely popular. As we said, he wrote off kmd, whoever or whatever that is, because it would be perceived as mostly sick. He is clearly highly concerned with how his actions will be perceived personally. As I sort of mentioned earlier in the episode, I was really trying to think about what do I believe is his psychology Because I listened to a lot of people talk about it and I wasn't that impressed with a lot of the takes that I read. People talking about him being anti capitalist. I was like where? Where is that? I don't see that at all.

[Sam]

I think it's. They've misunderstood his understanding of efficienc.

[Hannah]

I agree. So I really tried to think about this and so I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist, so of course people can disagree with me. But this is my thinking on it. I think he felt like he was failing. He had always been a high achiever his entire life and he no doubt had very high expectations placed on him by his family. You don't come from a family that starts with nothing, build up millions and millions and millions of dollars as like an empire and then put your child in a $40,000 a year school and then expect them not to be an incredibly game changing person at the end of that. And I think he also had those expectations of himself. And maybe as Gowinda Bogle said, he felt lost, unsure maybe as to how he was going to make a difference in the world, make his mark as he knew he could and as he probably believed that he should. And then I think bingo. The craven healthcare insurance industry in the U.S. i think that Luigi Mangioni wanted praise and hero worship. Maybe this is my theory, likely more than he believed he could genuinely completely transform the healthcare industry with just one action. I could believe that he believed that he could start conversation with this one action. But I don't think the praise and the hero worship were unimportant. To me it comes across like kind of the ultimate virtue signaling. Though of course in his mind Luigi Mangioni would absolutely have convinced himself that his intentions were entirely moral. You have to, if you're gonna shoot another person, you have to justify those actions to yourself. As we have said many times on this show, no one is a monster in their own story. But I think the fact is that the status Luigi Mangioni worried that maybe he couldn't achieve through competence. Not that he wasn't competent, not that he wasn't intelligent, but maybe that he felt he couldn't achieve, like the personalities, writers and intellectuals that he followed on social media. Maybe he decided to achieve that through dominance. He wanted status and impact immediately and loudly. And maybe that speaks also to somewhat of this sort of like instant gratification culture that he had grown up in. I think he was like, let me do this. Look at this problem of health care and insurance, but also look at me. And it worked.

[Sam]

Yes, it did work. I wonder if there's an element of. I mean, the reason we all find the people playing Wonderwall in Hostel so irritating is. I mean, the reason I do is that feeling of like, why in the world do you think you can tell me that you're better than me, that you've got it right and I've got it wrong because who the fuck are you? So I think there's. He will have come into contact with that way of being as well. Of like, no, like the whole damn system is wrong. And whether that is the COVID he used for feeling inferior, I could probably buy that.

[Hannah]

I think that goes from that feeling that a lot of us have right, of helplessness, of the system, of you try do everything the right way and it doesn't make a difference. Like you still end up being screwed in some way. But it's that difference of the type of person who's like, right, but I am going to do something about this. And yeah, it's interesting. That's what makes him interesting.

[Sam]

I think I would be more inclined to see him as this, like having this need to prove he's not a failure if he had failed. He doesn't really fail anyway, he's just bored.

[Hannah]

No, I think it's not that he's failed because he hasn't. He hasn't really. He's been bored. You're right. I think what it is, is he is scared he life is going to pass him and he won't have done this big thing that is going to make a mark. I think that is a feeling that. And not to make myself sound like some sort of crazy narcissist, but it was a feeling that I have often had in my life as a person who was like raised with this story of like my family, my dad, like working himself out of poverty into like a really good position that he has now. And it was never said to me, but it was kind of implied. Well, if I could do that from nothing when we've given you all these opportunities, you should be able to achieve anything. And I think that feeling of, you're right, I am capable. What am I going to achieve with my life? And I think there is this feeling that you can have of like, I am chronically underachieving for what I believe I should be doing with my life. And that's where I kind of resonate with him. I wouldn't have done what he did, but that, that's. Maybe I'm projecting a little bit, but my mentality is not that he failed because I never really failed. It was more of a feeling of failing to live up to your own expectations of yourself. And I think that he, the way he speaks about other people, which I don't hold those beliefs, but the way he speaks about other people, no one being on his wavelength, he can't really speak to anybody. Nobody gets it, is this feeling of like, but I am here to do something. And I think it was not a fear that he has failed, but a fear that he wouldn't live up to expectations of his own making, which would be akin to failure, is my theory about it. And it was this one hot, fast, crazy, violent, headline grabbing action that was going to change something. Instead of just being an ncp. Who's the woman you know dropping her coffee when Brian Thompson gets shot, but who's probably complained a million times about the healthcare industry?

[Sam]

And when it comes to the online reaction, if you only look online, the reaction will look quite skewed. The majority of Americans didn't condone Mangione's actions, even if they sympathized with the motive. But in the adoration he got, the way he looks certainly played a key role. The halo effect is very real when it comes to criminals and even alleged ones. When people think you're hot, people are more likely to be lenient and chalk up your motivations to something more pure. If Luigi was Butters and still shot the same man, there would be a lot less I heart Luigi T shirts but Daddy, I love him.

[Hannah]

And this has been proven in the courts, like, obviously attractiveness, you can argue is subjective. But if we just look at what is universally regarded as attractive, like even, and I'm sure I've said this stuff before on the show, but even, like schoolteachers, female schoolteachers who rape their minor students, they obviously get less time than men who do it to female students. But the more attractive that female teacher is, the less time she will get in prison, if any at all.

[Sam]

I'm going to remember that example next time someone tries to tell me that beauty standards don't exist and it's actually just, you know, everyone just likes different things. Fuck off. Patronising motherfuckers. Anyway, as for whether Luigi Mangione wanted to get caught or not, we don't really know. It's not super clear. He had a passport and cash in his bag, including foreign currency. But the manifesto does suggest that he wanted people to know why the shooting had occurred. And here we are talking about it. So mission accomplished. Yeah.

[Hannah]

And he wasn't caught for, like, a few days after the shooting. I don't know why he was. Still. He had the passport. Right, I get it. But nobody knew his name at that point. Like, why didn't he leave the country? Because he was hanging out in Altoona. Like, I. I don't know. So some people say he absolutely wanted to get caught because he's gonna, like, you know, hold up this manifesto and he's gonna become this sacrificial lamb, the poster boy for why the industry needs change. He needs to be the face of it. I don't buy that. I think he wanted the manifesto to probably be found so somebody would read it and know. And that's why he wrote it on marker pen, on the casings, the three Ds, so that people would immediately connect it with an ideologically motivated killing. But I don't think he wanted to get caught. I don't think. I don't know why he didn't get out of there sooner, but I'm not sure. Maybe he saw all the love he was getting online and he was like, oh, maybe I do want to get caught. I don't know. It's hard to reason with how easily he was captured.

[Sam]

Hmm. Yeah. I mean, there's literally no reason. He couldn't have just gone somewhere with no extradition treaty and he would have been fine.

[Hannah]

Yeah.

[Sam]

Oh, but then would he just get locked in the Ecuadorian Embassy like Julian Chassange for the rest of his life?

[Hannah]

I don't know. And maybe he was just, like, ironically crippled with very inefficient decision making on that. Who knows?

[Sam]

And then another big question. Whether we can ever truly separate the message from the man. But realistically, doesn't really matter. It's too late. Whatever the outcome of the trial, Luigi has been legitimized by a lot of people. He represents a very real fury and disillusionment that is very close to the surface. And there is something uniquely personal about the healthcare industry and how it sits in so many people's lives. And by choosing a common enemy of both the left and the right, Luigi actually did get the national conversation he wanted. For many people, the healthcare system was so deeply unfair that it balanced the scales in their eyes. Brian Thompson profited from the suffering and death of millions and those people will never see any justice. This is all bigger than Brian Thompson. The system as a whole is killing people wilfully, but you can't shoot the whole system down. So Brian Thompson had to do still.

[Hannah]

The other thing we can't get away from is the idea that this might very easily give other people ideas. There are a lot of people out there with a lot of different grievances. And the way that society has praised this one ideological murder could very easily plant the idea in someone else's head that they would be received the same way they could easily pick their own chosen target and commit a high profile murder to draw attention to their cause or threaten to, to enact some kind of social change.

[Sam]

And then they'll have the crushing realization that, that they're not as impactful because they're just not fit enough.

[Hannah]

And also the target they've chosen. Say if you live chronically online, you may think has bigger support across the country than it actually does. And you're going to get a very rude awakening that most people were not pro you shooting XYZ person because this thing grievances and ideologies, it's like who's to determine what's right or wrong. So if you glorify one killer, somebody else watching will be like, oh, that could be me. And everybody will cheer me because I will free XYZ group of people or I will help these marginalized people by doing this. And then obviously you're playing a very dangerous game. But still with regards to Luigi Mangione, the morals and ethics are not what he is charged with. The trial technically should ignore all of this. The only question that needs answering in the eyes of the law, did Luigi Mangioni kill Brian Thompson and was it premeditated? Luigi Mangioni has pleaded not guilty to all charges and there are actually armies of people online protesting his innocence.

[Sam]

I don't think he hasn't pleaded not guilty because he's pretending he didn't do it. He's pleaded not guilty because he wants a trial and he wants it to go on for years. And I'll be honest, if it exposes the health care industry and if something comes out of it, I'm glad.

[Hannah]

And that's what he's going to do. I don't really understand the people saying he's innocent. He had a manifesto in his bag when he was caught. He had the gun which matches the shell casings at the scene. Like, obviously. Allegedly. Allegedly, allegedly. Like he hasn't been convicted yet. But he also had the ID on him that matches the one that was used in the hostel. And his fingerprints match the ones on the water bottle and the granola bar that were also found at the scene.

[Sam]

So actually, the real question is, what's gonna happen to him once he is found guilty, which is quite literally the only thing that can happen unless he, Jimmy Hoffa's off to Cuba or someone like, tunnels him out. And that just lies with legal definitions on his charges. A big question is whether he was in his right mind. It's been suggested that an insanity plea may be pursued, but that would be quite literally insane. Not guilty pleas for reasons of insanity work so rarely to even try. You should be disbarred, in my opinion. And Luigi is very clearly a cogent, thoughtful person. I would be shocked and appalled if his defence team went down that road.

[Hannah]

It feels like a nonstop.

[Sam]

I mean, I hope, but there's nothing I won't believe anymore. But then there's also less severe emotional disturbance when it comes to legal definitions. So could Luigi have been so disturbed in the moment to result in a profound loss of self control? Again, probably not. He wrote three months ahead of time that he wanted to whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean counter convention. It is a long way from a momentary lapse in control.

[Hannah]

Now, his defence could try the necessity defence. This is the argument that the action was the only way to fix a certain problem. Now, it would also be an absolute nightmare to prove, no matter how extreme the harm done by insurance denials, there are obviously other ways to go about solving them. And especially when he's not specifically connected to a particular failed claim, I think that's going to be a massive uphill battle. I could see them go for maybe a diminished capacity defence, which basically means that due to mental impairment caused by perhaps his intensely chronic pain, he had some form of, like, impaired mental capacity and judgment. And so he wasn't able to fully control his behavior and reflect on its consequences, which, like, maybe. But he'd already written about how he was completely cured and not on any pain meds anymore. So I think that will also be very difficult. And regardless of pretty much most of these defenses, they would still probably ultimately leave Luigi Mangione still being found guilty of the killing they may just lessen his sentence.

[Sam]

The last option would be a big swing jury nullification. This one only ever comes into play in politically charged cases. And in these cases, the jury decides to ignore the law completely and instead they choose the verdict that they believe to be right. They don't have to think that the murder was justified. They only have to agree that a guilty verdict would be unjust. And this would very much depend on their reaction to public opinion, which they aren't supposed to be swayed by or even have access to, but impossible to really sequester anything anymore. And we're recording them in the wrong order. But I'm writing OJ at the moment. The sequesterment of that jury, 100% contributed to him getting off 1 million bajillion basquillion percent. They fucking hated each other. They did 266 nights in a hotel. They weren't even allowed to lock their own doors.

[Hannah]

Yeah, this is why I'm not pro sequestering, because people also, even if they don't hate each other, they're just like, okay, what does everyone want to do? Let's just go home. What do you want me to say? Because naturally you're going to break people like that.

[Sam]

And yeah, jury selection is also. We don't have to. I mean, you already know all of this because you listened to it before Christmas when we did OJ So welcome from the past. Anyway, prosecutors in New York said in court filings that Luigi Mangione killed a man in cold blood and patted himself on the back for his evil act. The same filings say that Brian Thompson and United Healthcare became symbols of the healthcare industry and what the defendant considered a deadly greed fuelled cartel. Their position is simple. This was a murder, potentially a terrorist act and should be tried as that and nothing else. And Mangione's lawyers are just as keen to keep the national conversation away from this trial. In the defence's court filings, they wrote about members of the Trump administration using Luigi as a kind of poster boy for left wing extremism.

[Hannah]

And that's because Luigi has been embraced the most by people on the left. The polls show it and so do social media. But I do think it's quite funny because he certainly does not see himself as left aligned Luigi Mangione. Looking at his posts, looking at his writings, looking at the people he was following, he's far more heterodox in his beliefs. In his online posts, he was often railing against WOKE ideology, the manipulation of society by the WOKE liberal bias, and citing the fall of Rome that is Western civilization. And he blamed the right and the left for the failed state of the US healthcare system. He didn't like Trump, but he also didn't like Biden and instead rates RFK Jr.

[Sam]

I wonder if he still thinks that. But however he politically identifies himself, the government comments are particularly relevant since he is supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty. The Department of Justice issued a direct warning to the Trump administration not to reference Luigi or his guilt before a trial has even taken place. And still the President himself has said several times on Fox News that Luigi Mangione gunned down a CEO to further a liberal agenda. Karen Friedman Alfinio called those statements false, prejudicial and a part of a greater political narrative that has no place in any criminal case, especially one where the death penalty is at stake.

[Hannah]

So yes, this very complicated, convoluted trial is due to take place sometime this year in 2026.

[Sam]

Yeah, fucking right. That jury selection is going to go on for the rest of my fucking life. Forget the Epstein files. We won't find out what happens to Luigi.

[Hannah]

I think it's probably highly unlikely that the case will that the trial will actually take place this year. And if the free Luigi armies outside all of the hearings that have taken place so far are anything to go on, when the trial does eventually roll around, it will be an absolute circus. Now, these hearings that we have already had have basically watered down the more extreme charges. Firstly, the death penalty. Many states define first degree murder as any premeditated killing, but New York is not one of those states, and that's where his death penalty charge was filed in New York. On top of premeditation. A first degree murder conviction requires an additional aggravating factor. Those include things like torture, the killing of a witness or law enforcement officer, and terrorism. As you can imagine, post 9 11, New York has very specific laws around terrorism. The definition is complex, but the main thing is that to make it terrorism, the perpetrator has to aim to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or threaten violence in order to intimidate authorities into political action. These things are hard to prove. With Luigi, Thompson was dead, there was no blackmail happening, and any future threat was way too abstract to attribute to Luigi. And his lawyers have said that the terrorism charge would trivialise and redefine terrorism. And since the evidence was legally insufficient, it was dropped. So now it's just a murder trial with some firearms and stalking charges thrown.

[Sam]

In and it might slim down even further than that. Luigi's lawyers have asked for the firearm related counts to be dismissed as well. They say that they rely on classifying the stalking counts as. As crimes of violence. But stalking offences aren't violent, so they want those thrown out too. Luigi's team have also asked the judge to exclude body cam footage of Luigi and McDonald's from the evidence because they say it was obtained improperly. They claim that Mangione wasn't read his Miranda rights before being questioned and that his backpack was searched without a warrant. So they argue everything from that search and questioning should be ruled inadmissible. It's worth a punt if you're on the defence, I would say, because sometimes they do just fuck it up. It's always worth a push. But it would mean that the gun and the manifesto and the ID wouldn't be allowed to be submitted as evidence as a part of the trial.

[Hannah]

What the fuck were those police officers thinking?

[Sam]

I honestly, I'm not convinced there's anything behind them being collected improperly at all. I genuinely think that any defense would give it a shot. I really do. I think they're just hoping they did.

[Hannah]

If they didn't read him as Miranda rights and things like that, though, for fuck's sake, like there was a nationwide manhunt. It wasn't like you just came upon him, somebody called it in, you went there knowing who you were going to find. Just read him his fucking Miranda rights. Oh, my God. Yes. We don't need to go into another broken system that can be manipulated by people who have money and can buy hire expensive lawyers to escape justice.

[Sam]

And then, of course, there's the perp walk team. Luigi will attempt to prove that it was intentionally staged for effect to increase his guilt. And if they can find any messages or evidence to support that, it would prove government misconduct and an attempt to influence jurors. And that would mean a lot more things could be dismissed.

[Hannah]

For now, at least. Plenty of charges remain from Pennsylvania, New York and the federal court. And if Luigi Mangione is found guilty of second degree murder, he could get 25 years to life. And that is where we'll basically have to leave it today. We may be back later this year or next year or the year after, or at some point as and when this trial may or may not take.

[Sam]

Place, I will be long dead.

[Hannah]

But until then, all I've got left to say is that it's crucial with such crimes that they are not excused or normalized, let alone glamorized or venerated. While we can acknowledge the legitimate grievances that people have with the healthcare industry in the us. And believe me, as I have said, I have more than my fair share with our system here in the uk. Can't condone vigilante violence and its support, because next time the violence might just be aimed at someone you think shouldn't be shot to death in the street. That was a heavy one for a January kickoff, wasn't it? Yeah. I've got a headache.

[Sam]

Me too.

[Hannah]

So that's it, guys. Happy New Year. It was a heavy one for us to start the year with, but we're excited you're back. We're excited to be back. And stay tuned for lots more red handed in 2026. But definitely not a trial for Luigi Mandrin. Bye bye, Sam.