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A
Hiring isn't just filling a role. It's about finding people who can drive results. Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you match with the right candidates faster. Target candidates by skills, certifications or location. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the Right Way with Indeed.
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B
It's Friday, June 12, 2026. From peach fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Republican Dan Sullivan has been banned from appearing on the Alaska ballot for U.S. senate. This is welcome news to incumbent Senator Republican Dan Sullivan. Oh, oh, the Dan Sullivan Republican of Alaska who can't run. Isn't that Dan Sullivan, the one in the Senate who has been serving there since 2015? Alaska Public Media has more.
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A
The Alaska Division of Elections says retired teacher Dan Sullivan of Petersburg is not eligible to run against Republican U.S. senator Dan Sullivan.
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B
They're calling the non Senator Dan Sullivan Petersburg Dan Sullivan, who is not to be confused with Sullivan Dan Petersburg, a welder from the Catskills or Dan Rivera of the law firm of Peterson Sullivan who is a real person who never asked for any of this. Anchorage is KTU Channel 2 and their reporter Will Courtney have been doing some
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C
digging, but in a letter he sent us today he says he never even received her letter and called the investigation inappropriate. In Sullivan's letter where he repeatedly misspells the Lieutenant Governor's name.
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B
Now to clarify her name is Dan Sullivan. Please continue.
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C
He says he's not working with Mary Peltola to cause voter confusion, something national Republicans and Senator Dan Sullivan himself have accused him of. Peltola also denies any connection. I've been trying for weeks to speak to the Petersburg Sullivan but he hasn't returned any of my calls.
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B
Frustrating. But are you sure you're even calling the right Dan Sullivan? Which is to say the wrong Dan Sullivan, though in this case that is the right Dan Sullivan to be calling. Maybe you're calling a third Dan Sullivan who's getting all of Will Courtney's calls and saying leave me alone. Those are Daniel Sullivan. I'm Brendan Sullivan. I just go by Dan and I am currently third in the race for a comptroller. And in any case, given this total dearth of actual and actionable information, I would say yeah, this calls for plugging the news gathering process of Katie, you, you, you know you live on our
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C
website and our mobile app. More about what we know on the candidate's letter. Will Courtney, Alaska's a new source.
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B
Well, you seem not to know much of anything. It's a hard case. I understand everyone's using an assumed name or their actual name and hoping that people assume it's the other guy. Except you are on top of the correct spelling of the lieutenant governor's name that I'll give you. But are you Will Courtney, the country singer Will Courtney, The Rand Corporation scholar Will Courtney? Or the Will Courtney, Alaska news guy pounding the pavement on the Dan Sullivan beat? Will Courtney. Maybe you're the first Google search for Will Courtney, which I can answer. A definitive we don't know yet. That search being will Courtney COX Return for Scream 8. We don't know so many. Dan Sullivan's is freighted with intrigue and mystery. For now, reporting from Sullivan County, I'm Mike Pesca, currently enjoying a plate of Dan Dan noodles. Back to you, Dan. Thanks, Sully. Good guy, that Sully. Bad speller for a senator, though. On the show today, a spiel about cow, she and survivor and betting markets and the boys, as filed by my boy, special youth correspondent Milo Pasca. But First, Gary Slutkin. Dr. Gary Slutkin has been all over the world and out in the field developing ways to combat hatred, enmity, and the violence that results. His framework is think of it like an epidemic. Not much different from Ebola. The end of violence, eliminating the world's most dangerous epidemic. Gary Slutkin up next. Ever notice how the second you Google something, suddenly every ad you see is about that thing? Or when you're traveling and just want to watch the show you always wanted to watch, it's blocked. Yeah, the Internet isn't really open. They call it the open Internet. No, you have to start using a product like ProtonVPN. I use Proton VPN, the traveling part. I mean, I'm paying for my subscription. It doesn't matter if I'm overseas. The way I see it, I want to see what I'm paying for on occasion. And also the security is really important. So. ProtonVPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. Haven't hit that point as hard. There's the convenience aspect and there's the privacy aspect. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the Internet like it should work or open. Secure and on your terms. They have strict no logs policy that's independently verified and it works seamlessly. So whether you want to Watch content from anywhere, get around block sites or just keep your activity private on public WI fi. Protect yourself. Proton VPN has you covered. It's easy to get started. Right now Proton VPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan. When you go to Proton vpn.com/gist, that's P R O-T O N V P N.com gist for 70% off your two year plan, that's protonvpn.com gist hiring isn't
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A
just filling a role. It's about finding people who can drive results. Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you match with the right candidates faster. Target candidates by skills, certifications or location. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the Right Way with Indeed.
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B
We're now going to be joined by Gary Slutkin, who's a physician and epidemiologist formerly with the who. He is now the founder and CEO of Cure Violence, which is exactly the point of his book, the End of Violence Eliminating the World's Most Dangerous Epidemic. Every one of those words is examined thoroughly in the book. Dr. Slutkin, welcome to the Gist.
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D
Yeah, great to be with you, Mike.
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B
So epidemic has a very succinct definition, and once my listeners hear it, I'm sure they're going to say, well, you can't argue that violence doesn't fall in that definition. And what is that definition?
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D
Well, ordinarily the definition of epidemic is just something that's at a higher rate than it should be. But, but the way that we're really using it in the book in epidemiology is that it spreads in a particular way with one event leading to more, leading to more, leading to more, and so on.
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B
Right? So it compounds and can lead to mortality or morbidity, and that's certainly violence. Now did you come to your theories and your practices based on an examination of analogies and definitions, or was it more practically you saw what led to violence being abated and then you back engineered and realized, hey, this fits in exactly with epidemiology?
- [07:46]
D
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I mean, essentially I came from about 15 years of working on other epidemics like cholera and TB and hiv, aids, and also exploring and learning about so many others and some of them I consulted on. So when I came back to the United States. I saw the violence in the U.S. i didn't even know how bad it was going on here. And I just started to work on it like a nerd. You know, I'm basically looking at graphs and charts and maps and things and data, and it appeared exactly like everything else I had been working on. And specifically, when I was looking at the trends, they weren't just normal trend maps. I mean, trend graphs, they were waves. They were like waves, like of the ocean, the very, very typical types of waves rolling up, curving at the top, coming down, going up and down, just like I had seen in cholera and hiv, AIDS and others. And in. If you didn't have the headline on it that said cholera or smallpox or whatever and violence, you wouldn't even know the difference.
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B
Early on in the book, there are two graphs juxtaposed smallpox and violence. And the graphs don't look the same, but they look like graphs of diseases. And then you even have the cluster graph of. Is it cholera in Bangladesh and violence in Chicago, where you were living at the time. And you could see clusterings of this, too. Now, the reason that. That the. That communicable diseases go in waves is that they eat the host, essentially, right? They run out of the disease itself either runs out of victims, or sometimes we're lucky enough to have immunity. Is that the same phenomenon? What's going on with violence?
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D
Well, it's very similar to what you're saying and not actually not incorrect. I mean, so it's going up because it's infecting more and more and more people. Then at some point there's less who are susceptible, either because of their immunity or because they didn't have susceptibility in the first place. So, for example, for Covid, you know, it's infecting more and more people, and then it kind of runs out of people who are exposed because they were already exposed, the ones who were close to those who had Covid. And then at some point, the deaths will go down because the people who were most susceptible to getting full disease, they already got it. And, you know, unfortunately, maybe we lost some of them. And so the same thing was happening with violence is there's a certain number of people who are highly exposed, some less, some not at all, and some who are highly susceptible because they need the belonging or they need. Or they have grievance, and now they don't have grievance anymore. So it can burn itself out. But in the meantime, that wave could have killed hundreds or thousands or millions or Tens of millions depending on, you know, its lethality and the extent of its spread.
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B
But is in terms of destroying the host, is that what's going on? I know that violence has gone up and down though at a much higher baseline than in other cities. In Chicago, where do you still live there? Because the book talks about.
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D
Right now I'm in San Francisco, but I'm there about half the time.
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B
Okay, so was it the case that the young, mostly black, some Latino inhabitants of just a very few zip codes in Chicago, there was such an almost endless supply of them that the, that it never actually wound up destroying the host and going down?
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D
Well, I let me reef cast that there isn't destroying. There's essentially the copying of the script and then the progression of the disorder. So you it there. I mean, yeah, people can die of being shot or of having shot someone and then being shot themselves and so on, but it, it, I mean, I don't like that that word isn't a usual health word. The usual health words are being infected and that infection progressing and then developing a more acute situation of showing the signs and symptoms and then either getting better as a result of, you know, our approach of the epidemic, control of treatment or management, or of continuing in that course. And that all depends on how we manage this epidemic like any other. So I just wanted to restate part of that. It isn't the destroying, it's the infecting. It's the picking up of the exposure and then the copying of it and then the other ways that brain works it beyond the copying which I describe in the book.
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B
Right, right. Tell me about some of your work, not only in inner city, but in war zones where your programs have worked.
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D
So I'm not running the organization anymore. I'm no longer the CEO, I'm the founder. And I ran it for 25 years just for clarification on that. But during that time and you know, continuing still, we have worked on community violence in cities in the US and in Latin America. We've worked on prison violence in the uk. We've worked on election violence in Kenya and even in the US to a certain extent in the 2020 election. We've worked on political violence in the Pacific Northwest and in conflict zones in Iraq, Southern Iraq, Basra and Sado City, and in Syria during active wars. And I even had the opportunity to work as part of a team on preventing what could have been a nuclear actually was a nuclear threat between the US and North Korea. And you know, so there's some of this is Gangs, some of this, cartels, some of this is tribes, some of the, they go by different names, but it is very much the same illness. And we've written about and guided people in the realms of mass shootings and other forms or syndromes of violence as well. And you know, and we've had very, very strong results. And other organizations that we've trained or that we know have also gotten good results too. I mean, in fact, I mean, you may know this from. But there's about, I mean, there's a dozen cities that are now in the US at 60 year lows or record lows. And the whole country is going in that direction. And there are about, there are about three dozen communities now in the US And Latin America that have gone to zero shootings or killings or both for a year to three years. So it's very, very, I mean, we had, we took, I mean we worked with partners in Honduras, which, in San Pedro Sula, which was the most violent city in the whole world. And this city had the rates of violence 10 times Chicago, not twice.
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B
Right.
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D
10 times Chicago's rates. And this was. Dropped 90% in the first two years. So there's there the approach, the epidemic control approach, the epidemic control playbook, the set of strategies we use for every epidemic works.
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B
And does it depend on recognizing not just the epidemiology and the analogy or maybe actuality of violence being a public health disorder, but the chemical components of dopamine which you write about and sketch in your book treating the chemicals, the brain chemicals, the brain reaction as one would pathogens in the body if it was Ebola or Covid.
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D
So two things on this. First, this is an actuality that violence is a disease not because I say so, but because it meets the definition of disease. The definition being having characteristic signs and symptoms. In other words, you can recognize it and that it causes morbidity and mortality, meaning disability and death. So we can recognize it and we know it causes disability and death. So it is by definition a disease.
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B
I just want to go back. What do you mean you could recognize it? Like you could recognize, you know what
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D
you can, you can see these are what's happening. This is a person who is, is doing violence. You know, he is using force or threat or power to cause someone else to, or a group to have injury or death or psychological dysfunction.
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B
Wait, how is that not a, how is that not a circular definition? We could define it because we could, we could define violence as a disease because we can see that it's violence. I'll Give you the. Of course it causes death or harm. I'm not.
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D
But these are signs and symptoms. That just means that there, these are physical manifestations that are a result of a change in function of an organ or system. Which is the rest of this definition. I just shortcutted it a little bit. And that's what you have. For example, with HIV AIDS you have very characteristics or with cholera you have very characteristic signs and symptoms of it. So yeah, you can say it's circular because yeah, I mean you can recognize cholera because you're seeing this profuse diarrhea. And so yes, it's cholera, but what you're recognizing is signs and symptoms or manifestations of something that shows up the same way repeatedly. And the fact that it's contagious is part of this definition in that what that simply means which differentiates non contagious from contagious is that it causes more of itself. So for example, high blood pressure doesn't cause someone else to have high blood pressure to someone else to cause high blood. It can cause stroke, but it doesn't cause itself. Whereas cholera causes more cholera Covid causes more Covid violence causes more violence.
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B
But every, I think almost every negative human trait. Well the word, the word is begets violence. Begets violence. But you know, suspicion begets suspicion, dishonesty begets dishonesty. I guess infidelity begets infidelity. Isn't it true that there are all these self generating, self reinforcing exacerbating traits, enmity being one of them. But enmity isn't exactly violence. The hatred, the propensity to do violence. I'm thinking that there are mechanisms there that are required for the violence to have the actual effect. Things like weapons and guns.
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D
Well, what you're describing is the phenomenon of copying and the cop there. Yes, there are brain centers for copying which is, if you, I think you have seen the book. Copying is a. Is, is like the first part of the brain. So there's a lot of things that yes, we copy but it isn't only that there is it causing more of itself, causing characteristic signs and symptoms that cause disability and death. It's also the way in which it works, the way that diseases, epidemic disease works is they. There is a dose dependent relationship with the amount of exposure, how much Covid, how much violence, et cetera. But also susceptibility. And we now know the susceptibility factors for example to Covid, you know, being older or having these, some of these metabolic disorders. But with violence we also know now that there are susceptibility factors, for example, grievance and humiliation, and also an age variable and also a sex variable variable, frankly, maleness. And so that there are. The way that epidemic diseases work is that they have certain criteria and they have certain principles by which they predictably occur and reoccur and that there are ways of managing them that work. And so there's, I mean, all of this has gone through. You know, the, the science behind this is in the first half of the book and how you deal with it is in the second half of the. But the. What there are, there are many things that are checked off that allow this to be actually the case in both definitions, criteria, principles and responses that are precisely the same as every epidemic disease. Now, with all that in mind, as you might have made reference to, these epidemic diseases are very different from each other. I mean, some are transmitted by air, you know, and by coughing. Some are transmitted by sex, some are transmitted by vectors. This is transmitted by vision and by proximity, social proximity and similarly. And the brain systems that you were referring to, these are now uncovered by research of the last 20 or 30 years by looking at how approval and disapproval works, how the pain center works and how the getting out of pain center works or system works. We now know these three brain systems that are overlapping, that predict violence and that cause it, the copying center, the pain center. And this, as you mentioned, this in a way, dopamine system. So in terms of, I think what you were asking, the last part of your question is, yes, we are working to regulate these. In the process of cooling somebody down, we're in the process of helping them get out of the pain situation into some recognition situation and getting out of this ladder, this dopamine ladder from not just now I belong, now I feel okay about myself. But this climbs, this climbs into needing even more acknowledgement and more status and more power. And this is, you know, and even to the point of cruelty. And so these are the, this is a high, a hijacked brain system, just like we get, you know, hijacked intestinal system or, you know, a hijacked respiratory system or some or immune system. And this is the way, this is the way that physiology works. This is the way evolution works.
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B
So tell me how your interventions might work in a gang setting, in a war setting, and even in a diplomatic setting. And how might they differ between and amongst those settings?
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D
Well, they, they differ. They, they have in common the principles of how to interrupt and prevent spread. And those principles start with now you can think about A gang situation in Chicago or Baltimore, New York or Honduras.
- [24:29]
B
And we have more with Dr. Gary Slutkin. So much more. In fact. If you're a subscriber to Pesca plus, you find out how to cure violence, go to subscribe.mikepeska.com. Truewerk is a brand that I wear and every once in a while they'll ship me a piece of clothing that really works with me that I didn't think of. Like pants with the knee pads built in. And then I go to the backyard and I lean down. I'm like, my God, my God. They're changing the game. And they're changing the game because of the fabrics, because most workwear is made from cotton blends which restrict movement and get soaked after a few raindrops or, you know, whatever perspiration one's own body emits. Not true work. Springtime is a perfect season for the T2 work pant. There you go. That's the one. Keeps your comfortable over a wide range of options. I use True work all the time. I would say use it uses the word they want. I just wear it. I will just wear it out. And it's a really good looking pant with a lot of pocket. I guess we're speaking singular pant and pocket. The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15% off your front first order at truework.com with code the gist. That's T R U E W-E-R-K.com code the gist. True Work. Built like it matters, because it does. And now the Spiel. With special guest spieler Milo Pesca.
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E
And now the Spiel. I went to the season finale of an Amazon TV show in a 40x movie theater. Yes, a 40x movie theater. Which moves you around in the seat and leads to mass popcorn displacement. As I was gyrating somewhat against my will, but supposedly in time with the screen, I had a good idea I would make a bet on the death of a boy. Wait, wait, wait. Let me explain. The show I was watching was the Boys, the dystopian riff on the superhero genre. Supes lose hundreds of people each year.
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B
It's a collateral damage.
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E
It's fucking diabolical.
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C
They're all like that.
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B
All of them.
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D
Yeah, pardon my French.
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E
Fuck those fuckers. I got the boys together because I was going to see the finale a few hours earlier than everyone else. I had an advantage a decade ago that advantage was that I would feel cool or in the know or special because I had some undisclosed knowledge. Now, in 2026 I felt pressure and if I'm being honest, a little greed, but more of the feeling of not wanting to be a sucker. There were bets on character deaths offered on polymarket, which you might know from such markets as Will the US confirm aliens exist? And Is the Earth flat? Truly riveting questions. Polymarket is a prediction market. It functions as a legal market regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC for short. There is technically no house edge on These apps like Polymarket and Kalshi, meaning odds directly correspond to chance. A 55% chance means a share is 55 cents, some other person out there is on the 45 cents side, and the market itself is taking a much smaller fraction of the bet than FanDuel or DraftKings. These odds are often more accurate than polling. In political matchups, people really put their money where their mouth is, which is a societal benefit. But me using the Fair app, I wasn't trying to benefit society. I was trying to watch the premiere gain an unfair advantage and bet. And part of me thought, is this illegal? Well, how could it be? What it could be was a sucker's bet. It's not like the Boys was an NBA Finals game. There are hundreds of people in the production cycle who know the answer. What are the odds? The plot points of the finale don't leak out to some extent. Not even the writer, director, actors and Amazon executives are privy to it. But so is every technician who uploads the show to a satellite, and probably that technician's wife and their twin daughters Megan and Mackenzie, and all of the members of their Olivia Rodrigo Fan WhatsApp group called the Livys. In the end, there was a quirk that the version of polymarket that would book these bets sorry, make these futures contracts wasn't the regular site offered to anyone over 18 in the US it was a crypto only site and I'm not on that for my own sake, I will not be joining. Even so, spoiler warning. When I saw the fish friendly underwater superhero the Deep die by getting groped by a grouper, he only had an 80% chance of dying. Had I had the crypto, I would be taking advantage of that other 20%. But here's the effect of betting in the depths of the Deep's death, I wondered if I like a short head red horse was a sucker fish joke. My dad made me make that. So while the outcome of the boys gave me FOMO because of the unrealized betting opportunity, the outcome of Survivor just made me a little depressed. One of my favorite TV shows, Survivor, recently returned for its 50th season of all Star players. I was so excited to root for my favorites to come back and snag a win. Could Ozzie outlast the competition? Could Saree manipulate the island? Could oh, Aubrey has a 70% chance to win on Coalsheet, which, full disclosure, sponsors the gist five months before the season started. And even though the show's finale was live, what that really means is the eliminated participants of Survivor voted on the final Tribal Council and CBS holds that vote for six months. But you see, that's not really a live unknown result. Most of the votes are pre taped and the voters know who they voted for, as do perhaps their friends, families and favorite policeman's pet snake. Lo and behold, Polymarket's prediction for things that actually happen. Market strikes again. Because lo and behold, guess who won Survivor. Aubrey Bracco. And the funniest part was Aubrey Bracco herself didn't even know who won until after 99% of polymarket knew she won. Yeah, either somebody leaked it, somebody got an inside scoop, or somebody pressed the contestants. Survivor host Jeff Probst got upset due to this and said markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, when used for already determined outcomes, incentivize insiders to lie, cheat and steal. So maybe they do well on Survivor. But it does represent free money. To many people in the know it is free money. And who doesn't like free money? And yes, it's illegal to do this. As highlighted by Another fixture of Survivor 50, Mr. Beast, whose employee Artem Kapchor wagered on the outcomes of unreleased videos. He was banned, fired and fined. But it goes to show that this incentivizes everyone. It's not just prediction markets that have insider problems. It's the very elections and financial systems we hold dear. Or not. We have members of Congress who invest and have such high performing stock portfolios that an app called Autopilot was made to copy their trades. These individuals have information on companies and America that the average person doesn't have and they're allowed to make the same investments at the same time. In essence is Pelosi the prototypical Polymarket bro. But speaking of Pelosi, the political markets and sports markets are much more fair. This is why I say Kalshi and Polymarket have to decide what they want to be. A site that allows betting on real outcomes or an exploitable insider trading wet market that's why markets such as how many times will Trump say blank in a speech? Are more open to insider information, whether that be by speechwriters, administration officials or Melania Kalshi. Or Polymarket already restricts some markets, including depths, though this didn't occur to them until after the posted odds on the tragic passing of Iran's supreme leader. I'm glad they no longer offer these bets because I can see me losing way too much money if Giuliani makes it to 2027. I do have to say as a 19 year old, while it's easy for me to bet some of my friends can't handle it. Maybe I wouldn't handle it either if I had more money to lose. But I'm not getting enough shifts at the ice cream shop this summer. But true story. My friend lost $10,000 in his first semester in college on a site called Rainbet. And no, it's not a weather prediction app. He just plays blackjack. Not well. Kalshee for me has resulted in a net loss of $30 over 10 months, though the Peska family is up 150 if you include their prediction that Tom Steyer would not be making the California Governor's runoff and an upcoming wager. Sorry future contract for Karl Anthony Towns to have the most rebounds in the NBA Finals. Not bad. I did lose 10 on the Knicks, but I'll do it again. So as the Kalshee Green mic says, my Aubrey is brocco, My Boyz is 4D, my Giuliani alive. Knicks in 5. Kalshee is the sponsor of the Gist. Mentions do not constitute endorsements. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission does not offer bets on the afterlife. Yet.
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B
And that's it for today's show. The Gist was pretty produced by Illinois Dan Sullivan. Utah Dan Sullivan runs the Gist list. Seattle Dan Sullivan books the show, Germany Dan Sullivan does How to. And the Dan Sullivan who's frequently in my backyard is the COO of Peach Fish Productions. Improve G Peru de Peru. And thanks for listening.