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Should You Shout "Help" or "Fire"? - The Gist | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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Should You Shout "Help" or "Fire"?

The Gist

Thu Mar 13 2025

Summary

The Gist: Should You Shout "Help" or "Fire"?

Podcast Information:

Title: The Gist
Host/Author: Peach Fish Productions (Mike Pesca)
Episode: Should You Shout "Help" or "Fire"?
Release Date: March 13, 2025

Introduction

In this thought-provoking episode of The Gist, host Mike Pesca delves into the age-old question: Should you shout "Help" or "Fire" when confronted with danger? Bringing in psychologist Sadie Dingfelder, Pesca explores the origins, effectiveness, and scientific backing of this commonly suggested self-defense tactic.

Historical Origins of "Fire" vs. "Help"

Pesca begins by recounting the dubious historical advice traditionally given to individuals under threat. Sadie Dingfelder elucidates the roots of this advice:

[07:58] Sadie Dingfelder: "Absolutely. It was in my high school psychology textbook, but it was right next to the story of Kitty Genovese."

The infamous Kitty Genovese case, often cited as the catalyst for bystander effect studies, is revealed to be largely apocryphal. Dingfelder clarifies:

[08:37] Sadie Dingfelder: "Not at all true. It has been so thoroughly debunked... there was at least five books about it. Yes, and two documentaries."

Further tracing the advice's lineage, Dingfelder credits a 1912 French self-defense guide for the earliest documented instance of advising individuals to shout "Fire" to elicit a more immediate response from bystanders:

[10:22] Sadie Dingfelder: "...part of this idea is that no one wants to help a woman, or people are afraid to help... But if you yell fire, they're all going to immediately leave their houses because they do not want to burn down in their houses."

Scientific Studies and Evidence

Pesca and Dingfelder examine scientific studies that have tested the efficacy of yelling "Fire" versus "Help" in threatening situations. A key study from 1980 is discussed:

[14:27] Sadie Dingfelder: "They... had these students... saw someone drag a lady across the hallway... the phrase that the woman yells, either help, rape, call the police, or she would blow a whistle or she would say fire."

The results indicated that:

50% intervened when the victim yelled "Help/Rape"
36% when a whistle was blown
22% when "Fire" was yelled

However, Dingfelder emphasizes the limitations of this study:

[17:35] Sadie Dingfelder: "It's not a great study, but there's a lot of research on the bystander effect because of our friend Kitty Genovese."

Another notable study from 1973 involving seminary students revealed:

[18:15] Sadie Dingfelder: "Only 40% stopped to help that guy... and only 10% helped in the 'you're running late' condition."

These studies collectively suggest that the advice to yell "Fire" may not be as effective as commonly believed.

Discussion and Analysis

Pesca challenges the practicality and cultural specificity of the "Fire" tactic. He questions:

[12:27] Mike Pesca: "But if you don't, you could also just make. Clarify the situation."

Dingfelder concurs, highlighting the ambiguity introduced when yelling "Fire":

[19:19] Sadie Dingfelder: "Because the main thing that helps or prevents people to intervene is the ambiguity of the situation."

This ambiguity likely reduces the likelihood of bystander intervention, as individuals become confused about the actual threat.

Pesca brings up the historical context of early 1900s Paris, where fire was a more immediate and frequent hazard, making the advice more contextually relevant but less so today:

[11:23] Sadie Dingfelder: "Pre World One Paris... fires were regularly burning down entire city blocks."

Additionally, the cultural shift has reversed the perception of danger from being attacked to fearing a fire, further undermining the advice's contemporary relevance.

Conclusion

After dissecting historical origins and examining scientific studies, both Pesca and Dingfelder conclude that yelling "Fire" instead of "Help" is misguided advice. The tactic fails to provide clear communication during emergencies and may hinder effective bystander intervention.

[22:36] Sadie Dingfelder: "Yes, I feel that that's bullshit."

Instead, advocating for clear and direct communication about the nature of the threat is recommended to enhance the likelihood of receiving timely assistance.

Additional Segment: Police Shootings and Media Representation

In a segue from the main topic, Pesca transitions to a critical analysis of media portrayals of police shootings, referencing a recent incident in Brooklyn involving Officer Edmund Mays and Darrell Nichols. He critiques the New York Times for:

Omitting critical details about the knife-wielding assailant
Focusing on fare evasion rather than the immediate threat posed
Amplifying protester narratives over actionable police tactics

Pesca argues that such media framing distorts public understanding of policing challenges, emphasizing the need for:

Contextual reporting that includes all facets of incidents
Balanced narratives that consider both police actions and bystander safety
Recognition of the complexities involved in law enforcement decisions

Notable Quotes

Mike Pesca:

"[07:50] Rodrigo Duarte has taken a flight to the Hague... this is an inherently political prosecution and perhaps likely a righteous one."
[Introductory content skipped]
Sadie Dingfelder:

"[07:58] Absolutely. It was in my high school psychology textbook, but it was right next to the story of Kitty Genovese."
Mike Pesca:

"[22:36] Sadie Dingfelder is the author of Do I Know You?... Sadie, Sadie, thank you so much."

Final Thoughts

This episode of The Gist challenges listeners to reevaluate commonly held self-defense advice through a critical and scientific lens, urging a move towards more effective and evidence-based strategies in perilous situations. Additionally, Pesca's analysis of media portrayals underscores the importance of comprehensive and unbiased reporting in shaping public discourse on policing and safety.

Produced by: Cory Wara, Michelle Pesca, Leo Baum
Your Feedback: Share your thoughts on this two-part episode at Oompuru G.

Note: Advertisements, promotional segments, and non-essential content have been omitted to focus on the core discussions of the episode.

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Transcript

Mike Pesca (0:00)

Hi, I'm here to extol the virtues of Peska Plus. Now, full disclosure, I am Peska and have been accused of being a little plus. But if you subscribe, and you do so by going to subscribe.Mike Pesca.com you get all sorts of bonus features. We do extended interviews. We have a book club every other month. We had an amazing live event. I don't know if we'll ever replicate this, but it's. It was a soiree, plus a discussion with members of the Fifth Column. And it's free for everyone who is a Pesca plus member. Now is the best time to get your membership approved. I have to tell you the approval process you're going to skate through. I know this because, as I said before, I am the titular Pesca of Pesca Plus. And of course, like all of our subscription services, all the podcasts will be ad free. But with Pesca plus, oh, so much more. Subscribe.mike pesca.com It's Thursday, March 13, 2025, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Rodrigo Duarte has taken a flight to the Hague. Not for the legendarily mind expanding coffee shops. The former president of the Philippines, whose drug crackdown killed an estimated 30,000, is there for crimes against. Duarte was a thug and a braggart. And every press conference he held could serve as evidence for the prosecutor. But at the same time, this is an inherently political prosecution and perhaps likely a righteous one. So the Interpol warrant was signed by Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Marcos Jr. Gained the presidency by running with Duarte's daughter on a unity ticket. Now Marcos Jr's party is pursuing her in impeachment hearings as her father is on trial internationally. The International Criminal Court. Marcos's own father, you remember him, he escaped prosecution. He lived out his days in Hawaii after stealing an estimated five to $10 billion in the shoes. Oh, the shoes. The elder Marcos killed only 3,000 or so. Extrajudicially, Duarte's body count could be 10 times that. Maybe it's only four times that. But complicatedly, he was popular. Duarte got elected saying he would kill drug dealers. And then he did kill drug dealers. And the populace of the Philippines liked it a lot. He left office with sky high approval ratings. It doesn't make it right. My point is that much of the Philippines bears culpability for the death toll. As do the international drug syndicates which threatened to turn the Philippines into a narco state. As do drug users throughout the world. And in the United States, ICC trials take forever. The last one, which ended in conviction, took six years. The one before that, Herman Katengo of the Congo, took seven and a half years. Rodrigo Duterte is 79 years old. On the show today, it's part two of my spiel. Nine bullets, one knife. Many wrong questions. But first, it's a cold night. You're walking down a dark street. You left behind the glow of neon and streetlights long ago. You see someone lurking, I'd say in the shadows. But there needs to be some light cast to create a shadow. This figure strides behind you, matching you, pace for pace. And then his footsteps increase. You feel him upon you. He's reaching out. You know you're in danger. Every ounce of your being urges you to scream, but what help comes to mind? But then you remember hearing, oh, maybe I should yell fire instead of help. Well, I can't keep you out of that dark part of town on that cold night. But I can give you the right answer for what you should yell. As determined by science. Sadie Dingfelder is here. Armed with studies, she's fired up, ready to help. She's here to play. Is that Sadie Dingfelder? Up next, elevating my style used to mean well. Spending way too much money and way too much time figuring out what website. Then when you go, you say, does the sweater look good? But Quince ends all that I know and can rely on high end versatile pieces at prices I can afford. 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Quince.com the gist I'm sure you know the old saying, may you live in interesting times. Well, you got it. These are interesting times. As Washington and the world adjusts to Trump 2.0, you can trust our friends at the Dispatch Podcast to break down the biggest stories from the campaign trail and beyond. So what you get in this podcast feed On Mondays, Jamie Weinstein hosts some hard hitting interviews. On Fridays, this is the piece de resistance. Sarah Isger, Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg and others from the Dispatch discuss politics, policy and culture, including shopping cart placement. If you're looking to deepen your understanding of the biggest news stories from across the country, you could rely on the Dispatch Podcast to ask the important questions and get the facts right. Find the Dispatch Podcast where you get your podcasts. In First Amendment law, the old saying is you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. And the but actually crowd who I appreciate will quickly come in and say, actually you can. That's a little beside the point because we're not talking about the yelling of fire when there is a fire or when you're in a theater. There is another anecdotal piece of advice out there that I have heard that instead if a woman, let's say, is being attacked, instead of saying Stop attacker, I'm being attacked, what the woman should do is yell fire. Okay, that's interesting. I could see why it would hit society as that's so sad or that's effective and let's be armed and forewarned. But the question is, is it true or is it bullshit? And because we're playing, is it bullshit? I welcome now Sadie Dingfelder. She is the author of Do I Know you? A Face Blind Reporter's Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, Imagination and the Yelling of Fire when you should be yelling I'm attacked. Sadie, welcome back to the Gist.

Mike Pesca (23:01)

Foreign is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations and now the spiel nine bullets, four Shot all the Wrong Questions Part two On a September Sunday in Brooklyn, a police interaction with a knife wielding man escalated into pure chaos. Four people shot, including Darrell Nichols, who refused 38 commands to drop his weapon. Two innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, one seriously injured, and even one of the officers himself catching a bullet. Body camera footage shows Mickels advancing on police even after Tasers failed to stop him, repeatedly telling officers to shoot me. The questions hanging in the air, what should police have done when confronted with this armed, threatening man in a crowded subway? According to one witness quoted by the New York Times, the answer is nothing. Police should have walked away. Yesterday we examined how this subway shooting unfolded. Today we'll scrutinize how the Times and other media outlets frame these events in ways that seem stuck in a pre pandemic mindset, one that disregards the real life lessons of deep policing and pullbacks in the name of radically reimagining public safety. In cities that pulled back most aggressively on policing, the consequences have been stark. Murders in Minneapolis more than doubled from the 2010s to 2022. In Portland, homicides increased from a total of in the year 2016 to 101 in 2022 after officials cut millions from the police budget after George Floyd was killed in 2020. Major newspapers serve as thought leaders and crucial civic voices in shaping policing debates. While the New York Times occasionally produces excellent work examining the complex trade offs inherent in policing decisions, too often it presents the most aggrieved claims of protesters and critics as reasonable or even factual. Their coverage of the Mickels shooting began misleadingly with a headline two days after the incident. Quote, Critics question NYPD shootings after Fare Evasion Stop in Subway. Six months later came this headline, one Hop Turnstile nine Police Bullets, four People Shot. Does it add up? Headlines telegraph what outlets believe are the most important elements of a story. The omission of any reference to Mickle's knife, while emphasizing fair evasion, reveals what the Times believes this incident is fundamentally about. They're wrong. It's not just the Times. In New York magazine and on public radio station wnyc, protesters voices received prominent placement while police explanations were treated not merely as versions to be vetted, which would be proper, but is inherently suspect. Knife wielding attackers aren't described as lunging at cops, they're described as lunging in scare quotes. Details that might justify police actions are routinely downplayed. Consider another story that received prominent coverage emphasizing the sad over the salient. The police Shooting of Kowalski Treywick Media accounts repeatedly emphasize that the shooting occurred in Trey Wick's own apartment or in his own kitchen. Only deeper in these stories would readers discover that Trey Wicked was actively charging at officers with a knife when shot in his own apartment, yes, but wielding a deadly weapon nonetheless. Which brings us back to the non fatal shooting of Darrell Nichols, two bystanders, and Officer Edmund Mays in that Brooklyn subway. Nichols was armed, refused to drop his knife despite dozens of commands, had been tased to no effect, and rushed at Officer Maze. What should the police have done? Nothing, apparently. That is the astonishing suggestion of David La Fauci, a witness quoted by the Times who wondered whether, quote, Mr. Mickels would have just gone on his way had he not been approached by the police. This question, never answered, conveniently ignores the knife, the threats, and the danger posed to everyone in the station. Perhaps La Fauci's perspective becomes clearer when we learn that he acknowledges, quote, I'm not the most pro police guy. He was arrested at a George Floyd protest in 2020, sued the city and received received $115,000 settlement. Now he's suing again for emotional distress over the Mickels incident, asking taxpayers to compensate him because an armed man wouldn't comply with police orders. If bystanders receive payouts every time police use force to protect the public, we will soon lack resources for policing altogether, which police, abolitionists and their media allies would consider an acceptable outcome. Here lies my fundamental problem with the New York Times approach. In this story and many others, it fails to treat a serious civic question seriously. The let's not enforce this law argument is frozen in 2019, a period when fantasies of massive police pullbacks seem plausible because crime rates were low. This mindset views policing not as a necessary tool for public safety, but is fundamentally a force of oppression evasion, never a force for order. The Times context free citing of racial statistics exemplifies this outdated approach. The article notes that only 5% of those arrested and 16% of those ticketed for fair evasion in New York are white. But these percentages only become meaningful when compared to the actual demographics of fair evaders, a figure we do not have. The city is 30.9% non Hispanic white. But only 24% of white new Yorkers rely on the subway for commuting, compared to 44% of Black new Yorkers. As I said, there is no denominator for that 16% figure. The argument that law enforcement must be racially biased solely because of arrest rates no longer deserves serious consideration outside explicitly ideological publications. Likewise, the reflexive rejection of fair enforcement serves as a proxy for rejecting policing altogether. This is a position that a lot of people have it's called police abolition. Whatever its merits as an academic exercise, this ideology does not deserve serious consideration in solution oriented civic discourse. Now, if New York made subways free, as Kansas City and Albuquerque have done with their buses, we could have a different conversation. But as long as transit requires payment, we need enforcement mechanisms not because of some controversial policing theory, but because that is how payment for services function in an organized society. Fair enforcement should, of course be proportional, professional and humane. Absolutely. But abandoning it entirely ignores $800 million in lost revenue, the weapons seized during the stops, and most importantly, the millions of riders who dutifully pay their fares and deserve safe passage. None of this excuses the injuries to innocent bystanders. Gregory Del Pesci and Kerry Ann Jahal deserve compensation and our collective sympathy for the wounds suffered during the shooting. They were simply commuting and should not have been caught in the crossfire. Could perfect policing tactics have prevented this shooting? Maybe. But the definition of perfect policing isn't policing up to the point where officers get injured or bystanders are hurt. There are legitimate questions to be asked about this incident, but those questions are ones of tactical positioning, marksmanship, and bystander safety. The Times, however, is not engaging in such a useful inquiry. Instead, the paper and much of today's media appears not to have absorbed the lessons from our post. George Floyd Experiment with diminished police departments. They continue to amplify old complaints about overpolicing while ignoring the background conditions of crime, public sentiment, and very importantly, the documentary evidence of what actually happened. When a man brandishes a weapon, refuses dozens of commands to drop the weapon, tells officers to shoot him, advances despite tasers, and declares his intention to make police kill him, the story cannot honestly be reduced to one hop turnstile, nine police bullets, four people shot. Does it add up? That equation will never add up because it deliberately omits the most important variable. And that's it for today's show. The gist is produced in two parts by Cory Wara. Michelle Pesca's cbso. Leo Baum is our intern. Tell us what you think about this big two parter Oompuru G. Peru Duparu and thanks for listening.