Ep 77 | Can President Trump Fix New York City’s Broken Justice System? | Rafael Mangual

Summary

Podcast Summary: Zero Hour with James Poulos – Episode 77

Title: Can President Trump Fix New York City’s Broken Justice System?

Host: James Poulos

Guest: Rafael Mangual, Senior Fellow and Head of Research for Policing and Public Safety at the Manhattan Institute

Release Date: December 16, 2024

Overview: In Episode 77 of "Zero Hour," host James Poulos engages in an in-depth conversation with Rafael Mangual about the escalating crime situation in America, with a particular focus on New York City. The discussion navigates through recent election outcomes, policy shifts, the role of technology in policing, and the broader implications for society and future generations.

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1. Optimism from Election Results

[01:28 – 05:17]

Rafael Mangual begins by expressing a "reserved optimism" regarding America's potential response to the burgeoning crime crisis, drawing insights from the 2024 election cycle. He attributes Trump's enhanced victory margins and significant wins in state and local elections to a nationwide "law and order moment."

Mangual: "There's some evidence that Americans are growing more and more fed up with the crime and disorder problems." ([02:46])

Mangual highlights key victories, such as Nate Hockman's win over George Gascon in Los Angeles and the recall of Pamela Price in Oakland, as indicators of a public shift towards more stringent law enforcement policies.

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2. New York City's Crime Climate

[06:06 – 10:39]

Poulos shifts the focus to New York City, questioning the current state of its justice system amidst headlines of increasing violence and disorder. Mangual acknowledges the city's decline from its once-lauded reputation as one of the safest urban centers.

Mangual: "The city's policy is what allowed Jordan Neely to be on the subway car that day." ([08:06])

He critiques progressive policies like defunding the police and mandatory inmate releases from Rikers Island, arguing that these measures have exacerbated crime and eroded public trust.

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3. The Daniel Penny Prosecution

[08:06 – 13:17]

A significant portion of the discussion centers around the controversial prosecution of Daniel Penny, who was charged for intervening in an altercation with Jordan Neely on a subway. Mangual argues that Penny's actions were a direct result of inadequate city policies rather than personal malice.

Mangual: "The city has basically said, we're going to create the circumstances in which New Yorkers are forced to deal with... bad policy choices." ([09:21])

He contends that prosecuting individuals for systemic failures undermines confidence in the justice system and detracts from addressing the root causes of violence.

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4. Gang Violence and Policy Approaches

[23:25 – 27:16]

The conversation broadens to address the rise of gang violence beyond traditional hotspots like New York City, highlighting its increasing presence in states such as Colorado and Louisiana. Mangual discusses various policy responses, including the extreme notion of waging war against cartels.

Mangual: "We have the tools that we need to deal with the stateside manifestation of that deeper problem." ([24:16])

He advocates for targeted enforcement strategies over broad, militaristic approaches, emphasizing the importance of political will and sustained efforts to manage gang-related crime effectively.

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5. Criminal Justice Technology: Body Cameras and Risk Assessments

[39:26 – 46:49]

Mangual evaluates the impact of body cameras in policing, noting their initial support from progressives aimed at exposing police misconduct. However, he observes a shift as body cams also facilitate prosecutions, leading to diminished support from the left.

Mangual: "Body cams were most useful for the production of evidence that gets used in criminal prosecutions." ([40:05])

The discussion then moves to algorithmic risk assessments used in courts to predict future criminal behavior. Mangual advocates for their careful implementation, arguing that they can enhance public safety without infringing on constitutional liberties.

Mangual: "Criminal history is one of the biggest indicators of what someone's likely to do in the future." ([45:03])

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6. Trust and Leadership in Modern Policing

[53:18 – 58:42]

Highlighting the evolving media landscape, Mangual argues that long-form conversations, such as those found in podcasts, foster better public discernment of leadership qualities and trustworthiness compared to traditional media snippets.

Mangual: "Long form podcast conversations... create trust at bottom." ([54:48])

He underscores the necessity of leaders demonstrating accountability and thoughtful decision-making to build and maintain public trust, essential for effective governance.

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7. Risk Aversion and Parenting

[58:00 – 61:16]

In the final segment, Mangual touches on the societal trend towards extreme risk aversion, particularly in parenting. He shares personal anecdotes about fostering independence and resilience in children, stressing the importance of allowing young people to face manageable risks to build confidence and leadership skills.

Mangual: "What gives people the confidence to go out and be leaders in their lives as adults are the experiences at a young age that they have overcoming challenges by themselves." ([60:20])

Mangual advocates for balanced parenting approaches that protect children without stripping away opportunities for growth and self-reliance.

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Conclusion: Cautious Optimism for the Future

Rafael Mangual conveys cautious optimism that with the right political will and policy adjustments—particularly in law enforcement and criminal justice reform—America can address its crime challenges. He emphasizes the importance of responsible use of technology, leadership integrity, and fostering resilience in future generations to rebuild trust and safety in urban centers like New York City.

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Notable Quotes:

• Mangual: "Americans are growing more and more fed up with the crime and disorder problems." ([02:46])
• Mangual: "The city's policy is what allowed Jordan Neely to be on the subway car that day." ([08:06])
• Mangual: "Body cams were most useful for the production of evidence that gets used in criminal prosecutions." ([40:05])
• Mangual: "What gives people the confidence to go out and be leaders in their lives as adults are the experiences at a young age that they have overcoming challenges by themselves." ([60:20])

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This comprehensive summary captures the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from Episode 77 of "Zero Hour," providing a thorough overview for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

[A]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. Venezuelan Gangs Assassinated CEOs we go inside the new American crime wave with Rafael Mangual. I'm James Polis. Welcome to Zero Hour.

[B]

La la la la la.

[A]

Rafael's a senior fellow and head of research for policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute. That's a prestigious think tank, in case you didn't know. Known for its role in the transformation of New York City into one of the world's safest and most attractive urban centers. Until a couple years ago, at least. And now Raphael's fighting to restore the city to its former glory. Welcome.

[B]

Thank you so much for having me. A real pleasure.

[A]

Absolutely. Okay, so obviously we've had an election, we got an incoming administration. Trump has always presented himself as being a tough on crime kind of guy, especially someone who thinks of himself as kind of a hero of New York City going back for decades. Are you optimistic about how America is going to respond to just the totally out of control crime situation?

[B]

Somewhat. Somewhat. It's a reserved optimism. And I'll tell you what the source for the optimism is first. I mean, if you look at the results of the 2024 election cycle, there's an argument to be made that because Trump has kind of presented himself, as you noted, as kind of a tough on crime figure, and the fact that he won with larger margins than he did in 2016, that that in and of itself kind of indicates that America's kind of having a law and order moment. And I think it is, but not necessarily because of the presidential election result. I think the story is really in the other election results, the state and local election results, particularly in deep blue states, places like California and Colorado, and even purple states like Arizona. So if you look at, you know, say, some of the progressive prosecutor races around the country, you had George Gascon lose his race to Nate Hockman.

[A]

Big Soros, da.

[B]

Big Soros da. And Nate Hockman ran his campaign on an sort of unabashedly law and order platform. And in a city as left is Los Angeles. And this is, you know, George Gascon is not just any Soros DA I mean, he has proven to be, you know, one of the ones with real staying power. I mean, he was the DA who succeeded Kamala Harris in San Francisco with her endorsement, did that, and then made way for Chesa Boudin, who then won that office when he, you know, went down to la, further north. I mean, you know, I mentioned Chesa Boudin, who got ousted from his seat a couple years ago. But right across the bridge in Oakland, you had Pamela Price, the Soros DA there successfully recalled, along with the mayor of Oakland, Shang Tao, who was a very, you know, sort of defund the police activist. So those are some encouraging results just in California. Then you look at the state ballot initiatives. In California, you had Prop 36, which kind of, you know, reversed, at least in part, Prop 47, which for those who don't know, lowered the penalties for theft so that the threshold for felonies was raised to $950 or something like that, which meant that you could basically get away with stealing up to $1,000 in goods, which of course came with all sorts of disastrous consequences. The same for the drug portions of that. And then around the country, you had progressive prosecutors in places like Athens, Georgia, where Lake and Riley was murdered. Deborah Gonzalez lost her seat. Texas was kind of an outlier here. Interestingly, you had progressive prosecutors win in Texas, in Austin, in San Antonio and in El Paso. But you had ballot initiatives in Colorado that pushed more funding for police, that created a new fund for police who were killed in the line of duty. In Arizona, you had a ballot initiative that actually makes people eligible for tax refunds if the government fails to enforce rules and regulations against public encampments and open air drug use, et cetera. That's a new one, you know, So I do think that there's some evidence, you know, that, that Americans are growing more and more fed up with the crime and disorder problems. But, you know, if the last decade is any indication, you know, the progressive criminal justice reform movement that has brought us a lot of the chaos is not only well funded, but it's very persistent and, you know, has shown itself to be politically savvy enough to remain relevant and, you know, still notch its wins. So we'll have to wait and see.

[A]

It does seem that way. You know, as a, as an East Bay, California boy growing up, I've been watching this unfold for a long time. And I want to talk a little bit about San Francisco in a minute, but let's start with New York City. That's your home turf. It's Trump's home turf. Obviously, you know, just, just news item after news item coming out of New York City, whether it's, you know, the Daniel Penny situation on the subway, whether it's the United Health CEO just being assassinated, comparisons to Gotham City flying around right and left, and, you know, even Eric Adams at this point is sort of looking for a way to get out of this kind of migrant trap. What's the temperature of the city right now? And do you think that just over the course of at least 2025, we're really going to see some of those blocks start to shift and that Gotham reputation start to melt away?

[B]

I hope so, but it's hard to say. I mean, I do think the proof is going to be in the pudding at the end of 2025 when the mayoral election result comes down. I mean, that's really to cement the future of New York for the next decade. There are a lot of tried and true far left progressives who have thrown their hats into the ring to run for mayor of New York. If they win, I do think that New York is going to enter a new era of sort of horror. I mean, there's really no other word for it. I mean, when you think about the ideology that's driving the sort of people who want to defund police, who want to decarcerate, who want to maintain this insane rule that city council passed to close Rikers island, which is going to require us to somehow release 3,000 inmates in about two years.

[A]

This is supervillain stuff.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's insane. And so I think a lot of sort of everyday New Yorkers are pretty fed up with the direction that the city's gone over the last five years. The question is, how politically powerful are they? And one of the reasons I bring that up is because New York City, we mentioned the elections that just happened. New York City is an off cycle election jurisdiction, which tends to result in much lower rates of participation. So fewer people are voting. We have closed primaries, which basically means that if a really uber progressive candidate wins a primary election, that basically guarantees them a win in the general. Because New York City is basically a one party city. So, you know, I think that New Yorkers are ready to change pace, but I don't know if the city's gotten as bad as it needs to to create kind of the critical mass of folks to show up at the polls and, you know, make their voices heard.

[A]

Yeah, well, when you think about, you know, Gotham Cities, Gotham cities create Batmans.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And it's not just a rise in crime and the kind of evil vigilantes, but you have sort of people who feel forced into a position where if they don't take kind of vigilante action. And we see this with Penny and that. That whole situation, a couple of guys who are assisting him somehow, no one talks about them. Yeah, they're off the hook. I guess. It's chaos. But good people are pushed to a point at which they feel that they have to take that risk of taking action. You can't just stand by and watch someone get. Get taken down in front of you.

[B]

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you can. And that seems to be what the city wants people to do. I mean, that's the lesson of the Daniel Penny prosecution, in my view. Right. I mean. Yeah. And it. That, you know, I don't. I don't necessarily read that situation as Daniel Penning being forced to do the right thing. I mean, he had no choice, really. I mean, you're in a moving subway car that's closed, and you're stuck in there with someone who is in the midst of a violent schizophrenic break and women and children. Women and children. Right. I mean, so there really isn't a choice. This isn't a manifestation of a sort of, you know, political calculation or, you know, I've had enough and this is my moment kind of thing. It's like, you know, what else am I going to do? And, you know, that really is, I think, the crux of why the Daniel Penny prosecution just doesn't sit well with a lot of New Yorkers. Right. I think we intuitively understand the dynamics of the situation here. Right. The city's policy is what allowed Jordan Neely to be on the subway car that day. Right. Jordan Neely was a violent known schizophrenic with a history of 42 prior arrests, including for assaulting women on the subway. And yet, rather than compelling him into a mental health treatment facility where he could get the care and medication that he obviously needed, or putting him in jail or prison for the crimes that he had committed, he was allowed to roam the streets of New York and eventually found his way into a subway car where he ultimately met his demise. And this isn't to say that Daniel Penney deserved to die. I'm sorry. That Jordan Neely deserved to die. Right. I mean, you know, that's not the argument here, But I don't think it's right to hold Daniel Penny responsible for the city's obvious failure. Right. The city has Basically said, well, we're going to create the circumstances in which New Yorkers are forced to deal with the downside risk and the fallout of our bad policy choices. And then if we decide post hoc that we don't like how you dealt with that, then we're going to prosecute you rather than hold ourselves responsible or change our policies or take any of the steps I think lots of New Yorkers would welcome with open arms.

[A]

Ye. Yeah, I've been in and out of New York a number of times. I got family in New York. You know, these are people who pride themselves rightfully on their ability to be proactive. And it's hard to live in the city if you have that kind of passive attitude, and especially when it comes to something that's a matter of life and death. This is fundamentally contrary to the spirit of just being a New Yorker, isn't it?

[B]

It's exactly right. I mean, and part of the spirit of being a New Yorker is recognizing that, you know, it's a tough city and you are going to be on your own at certain times. Right. I mean, you know, everyone who was on the subway car with Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely that day called the police. I believe it took the police 12 minutes to respond. Now, look, I'm a huge fan of the nypd. I think they do an amazing job. But the reality is that in a city of 8 million people, at a time in which the police department is having trouble recruiting and retaining officers, at a time in which the department is not only having those troubles, but having to deal with those troubles, despite the fact that they're receiving almost a million more calls for service annually than they were half a decade ago. You know, there are going to be situations that you're going to just have to handle on your own, and you should be able to do that with the confidence that the city isn't going to throw you under the bus if they don't like the way that the situation turned out. I mean, you know, I really do feel for Daniel Penny because, I mean, I look at what happened in that case, it's very clear to me that he didn't. He wasn't looking for a problem. Right. I mean, he had his headphones on, he's taking the subway from class to the gym. It's very clear to me that he wasn't trying to kill Jordan Neely. He could have much sooner if he wanted to. And it's very clear that everyone in the subway car that day perceived what Jordan Neely was doing to be A real and true threat. Now, I've seen lots of other videos of chaos on the subways. There's a video that made the rounds on Twitter about a year before the Daniel Penny incident, where a guy had. You can find this on Google or YouTube if you just search for it. But a guy, a homeless man, again in the midst of psychotic break, walks over to a woman after kind of pacing up and down the car, ranting and raving, grabs her by the hair and then pulls her to a corner of the train and sits her down next to him. You can see that this woman is utterly terrified, and no one in the train car does anything. And when that video made its way onto social media, the most prominent kind of comment that I saw was a condemnation of the other men on that trained for not stepping up and helping her. And yet, when Daniel Penny does what everyone knows was the right thing to do in a situation like that, the city turns around and tries to put him in prison for 15 years.

[A]

Yeah, that.

[B]

That's the kind of thing that really gets the goat of a lot of New Yorkers.

[A]

And there's also, you know, not a lot of talk about how it makes you feel to be put in a situation where you know that you have to be passive, and you have to be, in that sense, complicit in what's going on, or else your own government is going to punish you.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

That hurts the soul.

[B]

Not only does it hurt the soul, but it's also. It adds to the terror of that kind of moment. Right, because you're basically forced to roll the dice and say, well, I hope he doesn't pick me. Right. I mean, I've been riding the subways in New York City by myself since I was a little kid. For the first time in my life, in 2021, I did something that I had never done before, which was I changed subway cars out of fear. I kind of took pride in that, by the way. But there was a moment where a man came on. It was in February. I remember he got on the train, and I noticed him because he didn't have a coat. And it was like 20 degrees that day. And I had my headphones on. I'm sitting down, and this man is pacing, you know, not really talking to himself or anything. And then less than five seconds goes by, and he goes 0 to 100, takes a shirt off and starts punching the pole in the middle of the train car to the point that his hands are bleeding. Everyone is clearly terrified. It's an express train. So there's like five minutes before the next stop and we're all just held hostage there. And I had, just had surgery, so my arm was in the sling. I just remember thinking like, I'm screwed if this guy picks me. And that's the kind of thing, you know, that, that really I think kind of adds to the fear and the reticence for people who are not necessarily married to the city and has led them to avoid the subways, to work from home more and to move to the outer suburbs or find another state. And you know, out migration has been a real problem for New York and I think it's going to continue to be, especially if these other problems don't, you know, get taken under control by the government. Right. And by the other problems, I'm meaning, you know, crime, disorder, the migrant crisis, all of that.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. Although, I mean, I really can't overemphasize how disturbing the response to this murder has been. I mean, there are no shortage of people with terrible takes on social media, essentially celebrating.

[A]

Yeah, who's next?

[B]

Right, right. And, you know, I mean, the shooter wore a very distinctive jacket that apparently has been flying off the shelves. People have found the. You know, who made. I mean, like, imagine there was a lookalike contest in Washington Square park the other day for the shoot. I mean, like, it really is kind of something out of Batman where you have this, like, you know, terrible person being celebrated for a heinous act. You know, and even Ivy League professors are, you know, posting on X saying, well, you know, not condoning murder, but, you know, you have to understand that this is the inevitable. No, it's not inevitable. You know, I mean, it just. It blows my mind that it has escaped so many people that, you know, the implications of justifying homicide based on someone else's personal moral qualms. Like, you know, there was a Columbia professor who said something like, you know, when. When business executives abandon all sense of ethics, you know, this is the inevitable result. It's like, well, what happens if someone determines that universities have abandoned all sense of ethics? Which is an argument that can be made. Yeah, I mean, like, do you understand the can of worms that that opens? It's. It really is bizarre and disturbing, and it only adds to the anxiety of people, you know, who don't want to see this sort of thing, you know, who are watching and not only see that he gets away with it, but sees that there's a critical mass of people that want him to get away with it. And that kind of thing, I think, is going to end up spelling not the death of New York, because I don't think New York can ever die. I think it's a great city, it's a resilient city, and we'll always find a way to come back. But I do think it will spell a sort of downward spiral that we're gonna have to come back from in the way that we did in the 1990s, which was not a guarantee.

[A]

Yeah, I don't wanna beat the Batman thing to death, but it really is striking. And all the more so. Sort of the latest wave, the Robert Pattinson Batmans. This is a figure who is presented as an actual detective this is a guy who has to solve crimes and like, figure out these mysteries. And as the city sinks deeper into chaos and anarchy and evil, you start getting these figures who come up with these elaborate sort of structures that they use to sort of play with people. And when I saw the way that that hit went down and the way that sort of information started to be introduced and they discovered the backpack and it's full of Monopoly money and there's this whole social media thing. It's hard not to look at the way that that's playing out and to think, you know, have we entered into a new phase of crime in American life where there is kind of this, like, this game to it? You know, you think about Pokemon Go is being harvested to create a sort of body of AI data and it just has this. There's this sort of stink of like we are being manipulated in some way. You know, an event like this, it doesn't seem to be as cut and dried as just, you know, someone sort of feeling aggrieved and going out there and saying, you know, no, I'm going to take it. It's not like the 19th century, you know, where you have a guy sort of down on his luck and he wants to take it out of someone. There just seems to be something else going on here. Do you have any feelings about that?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think the sort of rise of social media has made it so that. But offenders like the man who killed Brian Thompson feel like if they market their actions the right way, right. They can kind of have sort of a Joker moment. Right. And to keep the Batman analogy going. And, you know, they have figured out how to sort of play on frankly, mainstreamed, far left notions of what's just and unjust and use that to their advantage and make themselves out to be folk heroes. It's up to us to reject that and to remind people that this isn't a comic book story, that this is reality, that you can't just take lives on the streets of major cities and that there are going to be consequences for that. But I think the biggest fear I have is that this is opening a door to a kind of new era of political violence, which is something that characterized American life to a much more significant degree than it has recently. Back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s especially, you had groups like the Weather Underground and FALN and the Black Liberation army regularly bombing buildings, and FALN actually opened fire on the floor of Congress. That's right.

[A]

Symbionese Liberation Army.

[B]

That's right. So that's the kind of more disturbing aspect of this to me is that that especially when there's a critical mass of people who are not just failing to condemn the act, but openly celebrating it, that that might encourage the sort of people who are already inclined toward political violence to maybe finally take those steps.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, it's probably always going to be true, whether on social media or television or wherever that if it bleeds, it leads, as they say. But just watching the way that the legacy media, or whatever you want to call them, who really just, they've been in freefall with viewership, especially since the election, they grabbed onto this and it's just wall to wall coverage and they're driving these narratives that this is a sort of drama that people should get caught up in.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And look, the legacy media has, you know, doesn't necessarily have a reputation of kind of covering these things with the most moral clarity, you know, so that's not really a surprise. And you know, like you said, I mean, you know, the legacy media and I've written about this has been, you know, struggling to keep eyes on it for a while now. And you know, so I think we're well past the point in which we could ask them to be a little better about how they approach these situations. So that's just kind of baked in.

[A]

Yeah. All right, so let's zoom out a little bit from New York. One thing that New York really hasn't struggled with as much as other areas is perhaps surprisingly, is gang violence. This is now something that's penetrated deep into the heartland of America. It's in Colorado, it's in other states where it does feel new. Whether it's Venezuelan gangs or other gangs, obviously the cartel situation is always looking bad. And it's pushed people, I think, to this crazy idea that maybe we just need to actually go to war with the cartels. Personally, that's, that's a can of worms I'm not ready to open. I wonder if you think that that situation is again pushing people in a direction where they're starting to make bad decisions or entertain bad decisions about going from an enforcement model to a full on war model.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's important to be introspective about pulling these policy levers. I'm a big sort of enforcement model guy, but I do recognize, right, that there is a head to the snake and it's not here and it's not bound by the jurisdiction of state law within the United States. And so that might require a different approach. And I'm open to listening as to whether or not that approach makes sense. All out war, I don't think is probably going to be very useful. But I also don't think it's very likely targeted strikes on particular actors or particular distribution centers or processing centers that might help make a dent. Yeah, I think that's worth considering. But ultimately, I think we have the tools that we need to deal with the stateside manifestation of that deeper problem. And it's really just a matter of political will. You know, you mentioned that New York doesn't have the kind of biggest gang problem, at least not like it used to. And well, that's because we figured out how to solve it and haven't totally abandoned that model. I think other jurisdictions can do that too. It's going to take resources, it's going to take political will, it's going to take the rest of the criminal justice system cooperating with the efforts of police and federal law enforcement officials. But I do think that when you zoom out, one of the things that you realize is that the gang problem is really concentrated in a really small number of slices of a given American city among a very, very small number of offenders. We have the technology and the know how to figure out who those high risk individuals are and how to best go after them. And if we can do that and do that well and do it consistently and persistently for five, 10 years, I think the payoff for that will be it will last generations the way that it has in New York.

[A]

Yeah, there's so much going on with criminal justice tech and I want to crack into that for sure. Just as far as the gang stuff goes, obviously it's an immigration policy thing. It's also a drug policy thing. It just seems like America has just been spinning the dials on those two issues for generations, trying to find some stable combination. We've gone way over toward incarceration to the max. And then we've swung way over to, okay, we're going to legalize weed, we're going to just give people a QR code and they become citizens. Where is the stable point? Is there a point? Do you think America is at a point now where people are ready to find that center of gravity and lock those two issues into policies that Americans can trust?

[B]

I don't know. I hope so, but I don't know. You mentioned the incarceration point. I mean, that's actually been, I think, central to our success or failure with respect to the fallout of Gang violence. Surprisingly, for a lot of folks, the majority of gang violence, particularly gun violence, is not actually driven by the drug trade. They're, you know, there's. There's a lot of intersection, right. A lot of people who are involved in the drug trade tend to also be deeply antisocial. And so that antisociality manifests itself in violence and other kind of ways. But, you know, when you dig down into the drivers of gun violence, almost, you know, always it turns out to be just interpersonal beefs. These are just really bad people who get angry at one another and in emotional fits, resort to firearms, escalates. And it's kind of wild. I mean, I was in Chicago for a ride along a few years back, and we started off at police headquarters and I was talking to some of the people there, and I mean, they were just walking me through how a huge portion of their shootings begin on social media. Just two people. You know, I was gonna say a bad word, but, you know, arguing against each other on social media and, you know, that ends up resulting in, okay, well, next time I see you out in public, we're just gonna open fire. And I don't care if it's broad daylight and I don't care if there are kids in the background or if there's a park nearby. And that's really how a lot of that stuff starts and ends. The drug trade and the way that we approach enforcing the rules and regulations surrounding the drug trade are actually key to creating the conditions that allow us to incapacitate the bad actors. So there's a really great study of gang prosecutions in New York. They're called gang sweeps, where the government would usually, both the state and federal government, through joint task forces, would identify high risk gang members, right? And high risk gangs and cliques who they know are involved in other kinds of violence. And then they would go after them for crimes that have a federal hook. Oftentimes the predicate offenses are drug offenses because federal government has jurisdiction over that. And then what they'll do is that they'll sweep up 20, 30, 40 of those gang members on the drug conspiracy charges. And then what the study found was that that actually led to a significant reduction in shootings in and around the public housing projects where most of those offenders lived. Now, the reason for that is that there's an overlap between the people who are involved in the drug trade and the people who are driving the gun violence problem. And this is one of the things that progressives never really wanted to recognize. They insist on this false dichotomy of violent and non violent defenders. Right, right. I mean, this was the big attack on the incarceration issue, you know, 10, 20 years ago, and still to this day. Right.

[A]

Just conceptually they've got so much riding on that distinction.

[B]

Right, right. I mean, to them, our mass incarceration problem was a function of the fact that we were over policing nonviolent conduct. Right. The nonviolent drug offender was, you know, overcrowding our prisons. When you dig down into it, even at the peak of incarceration, drug offenders were only about 22 to 23% of all state PR.

[A]

How much do you think, and this is going back a little ways, how much do you think that whole kind of narrative spun out of the consequences of like the three strikes law, where it was like, okay, you know, he, he beat someone up that strike one, he, he broke into a car that strike two, and then he stole a piece of pizza and now he's going to jail for 40 years.

[B]

The, the three strikes debate was so detached from reality in so many ways. It's. I don't, I almost don't even know where to start. But the sort of mass incarceration meme and the, you know, decrying the incarceration of non violent drug offenders really goes back to the 1970s. James Q. Wilson, who's one of my favorite thinkers on crime, wrote a book called Thinking about Crime, and the first edition of that book was published in 1975. And if you just change the dates, I mean, you could convince almost anyone that it was written in 2020. So these debates are not, not new. The problem with the sort of dichotomy that the left insists on framing this around is that criminals don't specialize. Right. The non violent drug offender who was selling you weed or cocaine the other day is also likely engaged in a host of other kinds of criminal conduct. Criminals tend to just be deeply antisocial people and their antisocial dispositions manifest themselves in a myriad of ways. So, excuse me, what you end up having is situations in which yesterday's drug offender's tomorrow shooter is the next day's car thief. And we see this in the data, right? So the Bureau of Justice Statistics has these longitudinal studies of recidivism where they look at a cohort of individuals who were released from prison in a given year and they follow them for 10 years. Years. Well, it turns out that the people who were primarily incarcerated for a drug offense, 75% of them get rearrested for a non Drug related offense. More than a third get arrested for a violent offense specifically. And if you look at the criminal histories of the people in prison for drugs at a given time, what you'll find are convictions for violent offenses, property offenses, right? So first off, off, there's the idea that criminals specialize and that's just wrong. The data tell us that's wrong. But the other problem with the dichotomy is that it doesn't really grapple with the fact that a lot of crimes are only nonviolent insofar as no one interferes with the desires of the offender. And retail theft is a really good example of this, right? So retail theft, which led to Prop 47, there's this idea that, well, these are just, you know, John Valjean stealing bread, you know, to feed his family. These, these are, this is a petty nonviolent offense. Why are we even considering policing and incarceration as responses to this kind of behavior? Well, it turns out that a good chunk of retail theft is really done in the background of a threat of violence, right? And we see these cases all the time where someone's grabbing things off the.

[A]

Shelves or a mob of people, you.

[B]

Know, or a mob of people are grabbing things, run into the shelves and.

[A]

Everyone stands there, right?

[B]

Nine times out of ten, everyone stands there. But every once in a while someone, a store worker maybe will step up and try to stop them. And inevitably what that's met with is violence, right? There was just a case the other day where a woman was, I think in a CVS and was stealing a bunch of stuff and a worker tried to stop her and then she pulled a knife out and slashed her, right? There was a case, I think it was out in California where it was at a Home Depot, somebody was stealing a bunch of stuff and an 80 something year old worker tried to stop the thief, shoved the old man to the ground, he hit his head and died. So the idea that these things are nonviolent is just wrong in all sorts of ways. One, because it doesn't recognize the reality that criminals engage in a very diverse set of crimes. But also it pretends that violence isn't something that the offender is willing to resort to in order to carry out the nonviolent crime, right? I mean, go up to your local drug dealer on the corner and tell him he looks funny. See what happens.

[A]

You don't get a free sample, right? So here's the crazy thing about all this. To me, anyway, I flagged San Francisco for later and here's why you look at The Trump victory, obviously, a lot of people were on board with that. You look at that map of sort of the redshift, all the arrows, and obviously that was a huge part of the win and a huge part of the mandate, especially for law and order stuff. I think there's no arguing that. But it's also hard to see how Trump could have pulled off that kind of win without the support of a big chunk of Silicon Valley. And when you go back and ask yourself, like, okay, well, where did this come from? And, you know, I've talked to these guys, and some of it has come from like, oh, you know, dei, like, this is causing tech companies to malfunction, and this is the one thing that we're supposed to be. Yes, that was a part of it. But those same people in the San Francisco Bay who were supporting and pushing dei, that's not the only thing they were pushing. They were pushing unlimited illegal immigration. They were pushing decarceration. They were pushing decriminalization. They were pushing, you know, poop on the streets. We should have more of that.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

You know, it was all those issues, all these crime, crime, law and order issues that we've been talking about, those are what radicalized. It was the tip of the spear that radicalized so much of Silicon Valley and our tech guys to say, you know what? We can't just look the other way. Sitting in our offices, sitting, you know, Salesforce Tower is up there gleaming, and then everything below that is Gotham City. We can't do that anymore. And that is what began this kind of preference cascade that led, I think, you know, in a really powerful way to a kind of Trump victory that we just wouldn't have had other.

[B]

I think that's right. Especially in a place like San Francisco. I don't think, though, that you can necessarily replicate that dynamic in the rest of the country. And I've been saying this for a while, but I do think that San Francisco is kind of an outlier in this regard in the following way. In most of the country, the elite professional class that made up the kind of folks in Silicon Valley that decided to rally behind Trump. Possible. Right. Like the members of those communities in other parts of the country are generally able to insulate themselves from the results of the bad policy. You know, think about cities like Chicago, where this is changing to some degree there, but the crime, the disorder is generally cabin to the south and west sides of the city. Same thing in New York. Right? If you live in the Upper east side, the Upper west side by and large. Right. You can kind of keep yourself insulated from the crime problem. San Francisco was different. In San Francisco, even if you were living in a $6 million bungalow, you would open your blinds in the morning and there'd be someone defecating on your sidewalk.

[A]

Right. Louisiana has been going through this too.

[B]

Exactly. The disorder was really the driver of it. And the disorder was much more evenly distributed than the more kinds of sensational sort of crimes that I think generally characterize the conversation. So, you know, if you look at most American cities, it is the case that about 5% of street segments will see about 50% of all the violence. But disorder in places like San Francisco and LA and you know, to a growing degree in New York and Chicago is something that is. It's more transient, it's more likely to end up on the doorsteps of the elite. And like you said, that's actually the thing that really radicalizes them. But the problem is that San Francisco, again, isn't something that's going to be replicated everywhere in the country. And so I'm skeptical as to whether we can expect other elements of the professional elite class to kind of come around to this.

[A]

Yeah, no, I think that's right. Although one thing that is capable of being replicated across the country is. Is anti crime tech.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And this is like, you know, this is a brave new world in so many respects. And we've kind of dabbled with it a little bit as a nation, you know, doing things like, oh, we're going to do body cams on cops, and this is going to sort of make sure that the bad, you know, bad cops don't. Will have accountability, you know, you know, all those narratives, I think it's been a pretty mixed bag on body cams. It raises some questions about, just because you stick some tech on it doesn't mean that you're making the right decision or you're actually strengthening policing and enforcement. What do you think?

[B]

Well, I think the interesting thing about body cams is that it's actually a movement that had a lot of support on the left and is losing a lot of support on the left now.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And the reason for that is that I think the left thought, well, hey, this is gonna expose this massive police violence problem that we've telling everyone exists. And it turns out that we don't have a massive police violence problem. They could have known that had they dug into the data back when they were pushing the whole body cam thing. Right. You know, it's the case that only about 0.03% of all arrests result in the use of deadly force. That's not something that you would ever hear a progressive say.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But it's totally contrary to their narrative, you know, that police are sort of trigger happy, violent.

[A]

Contrary to what you see on the television.

[B]

Exactly. But it turns out that body cams were most useful for the production of evidence that gets used in criminal prosecutions. When you put a camera on police officers, well, that's going to capture resisting arrest and assaults and make those inquiries much more objective. And it's going to create leverage that prosecutors can use to secure criminal convictions. And once that became apparent to the left, all support for body cameras began to dissipate. So it's kind of a strange moment. So I think there are arguments against widespread body cam usage that relate to things like privacy within the police car, that sort of thing. But ultimately, I think it's been useful. It's been useful for law enforcement. It's cleared a lot more officers than it's put into jeopardy. And I think a lot of officers that I've spoken to would feel very much, would feel. Would feel a lot less secure than they do now without the body cam. The body cam has become kind of a security blanket, particularly for officers who are kind of in proactive roles because they know, you know, if someone says, I did something, well, I have the proof here.

[A]

Little insurance policy.

[B]

Yeah, and we've seen lots of these cases. I mean, there were some viral videos, you know, over the last couple years of women claiming that they were sexually assaulted by police officers. And, you know, the body cam footage comes out, and you can see that, you know, that wasn't the case. And, you know, but we've also seen bad apples caught. Right? We've. We've seen videos of officers planting evidence despite wearing body cameras. Like, Jesus Christ. Like, my dad's a retired NYPD detective. And, you know, whenever I would ask him how his. His day at work was, he would always say the same line, which is, thank God they're not masterminds. And it's like, that's one of those cases, like, you know, but, but, but, yeah, I mean, criminal prosecutions have been aided to a significant degree by body cam footage. I. I think something like 85% of all criminal prosecutions involve some kind of video evidence now. Yeah, so. So in that sense, it's. It's been helpful if you like what.

[A]

We do around here, and you want a great way to let other people know what you're watching and listening to you're going to love all the Blaze Media Merchant available at shopblaze media.com Everything from the Blaze heritage and Blaze Media collections to agua donkeys and our Trump Vance 2024 merch. We have jackets, T shirts, mugs, flags and a whole lot more. There's so much you're gonna love. Go to shopblazemedia.com today. Check out all the cool stuff available from Blaze Media and be sure you use the promo code Blaze10 to get 10 off your entire order. That's ShopBlaze Media.com promo code Blaze for 10% off. Do it today. You look at the results and there is a logic that says, okay, so that's why we should just have cameras everywhere. You know, we should have full surveillance. And hey, you know, the computers are getting better at sort of pattern recognition and so we're going to have pre crime. It's going to be awesome. You know, there's now starting to be laws in, I forgot if it's Canada or the uk, probably both of them. I mean they're both going straight down the toilet right now. And all this stuff where you can take someone to court, I think it's Canada. And you can say, I have reason to believe that next year this person is going to commit a hate crime, so they need to be punished. Right now, obviously that's bad, but when you look at high tech pre crime, that can also be really bad in kind of the same way. So how do we know, how are we going to figure out where to draw these kinds of lines?

[B]

I think our Constitution does a really good job of drawing those lines for us. And one of the best things that the founders ever did was to make it really, really hard to amend the Constitution. And I think we have a Supreme Court right now that admires the original meaning of the Constitution and that will be faithful to it. And that to me is the biggest source of security I have for concerns related to the potential abuse of the kind of technologies that we're talking about. I don't want to live in a world in which people are preemptively prosecuted. I do, however, want to live in a world in which technology is utilized to identify who the highest risk offenders are and to use that information when we make decisions about what to do in response to criminal conduct that they have actually committed. And this is where I think you can kind of create the happy balance. And this is something that I think New York's been a leader on. And one of the reasons why the sky hasn't quite Fallen. Despite the fact that the policy regime in that city is kind of a criminal's dream. What the city has been able to do is use things like algorithmic risk assessment to identify who the highest risk individuals are. Right. The sort of. You can profile out sort of who is a real risk of future criminal conduct. Right.

[A]

Based on past conduct.

[B]

Based on past conduct. Right. Criminal history is one of the biggest indicators of what someone's, excuse me, likely to do in the future. And so if you look at algorithmic risk assessments that are used for decision making in court right now, with things like pretrial detention. Right. A lot of jurisdiction during a pre trial release hearing will look at a score that is generated by one of these risk assessment tools. And the tools basically ask a series of questions. And those questions are weighted, and the weights that are attached to those questions will determine the risk score. And the thing that's most predictive of future risk is past criminal conduct. So when we have reason to believe that someone who's in a gang database, who's got 15 prior arrests, who's been convicted of two prior felonies, who's done prison time and has just been rearrested for illegally possessing a firearm, and we have a choice as to whether to put this person in prison for 10 years versus five years, and that person's 21 years old, we can use data to make a smarter choice and go for the longer sentence in that case, knowing that everything in that person's criminal profile tells us that they're going to be a significant risk of future violence, such that we should incapacitate them for as long as we possibly can. Now, and if we do that systematically, we can, I think, garner a lot of real public safety benefits. And you can do that without having to sort of preemptively prosecute, which I think is the fear that a lot of people have. And again, that is not a world that I want to live in.

[A]

Well, right when you got facial recognition and you got predictive algorithms and you're not looking at past conduct, you're looking at precursors, and you're looking at statements, and you're just kind of monitoring someone from the cradle to the grave, waiting for them to, you know, say something or have a, you know, a relationship issue that sets off these flags. And then, you know, I mean, it's easy to see how that can spiral into dystopia. But, you know, I hear what you're saying, and I think that's the sound. But something that drives people nuts is we have these Databases already we've got lists and lists of all these people who the feds are keeping an eye on. Oh, they're a known, you know, whatever it is. And what happens to these people? Well, they don't get punished and they get monitored and they get tracked and then they commit crimes and then the feds are like, oh, yeah, well, we've had our eye on him. And it's like, then why didn't you do something about it? Yeah, how do you avoid that?

[B]

This is, I mean, this is part of the balance that we have to keep, right? I mean, when you live in a society that prioritizes liberty, which we should, there is going to be downside risk associated with that. Every constitutional protection that we enjoy comes with risk. Right? Free speech comes with risk. Someone eventually is going to say something that is going to hurt somebody, that is going to make them angry, that might incite someone to do something they wouldn't have otherwise done had they not heard the thing. We protect Second Amendment rights. That's a good thing, right? It allows us to protect ourselves. Excuse me, but when you have gun rights, broadly protected, people are going to do bad things with firearms. We have Fourth Amendment rights. We see time and again every single year hundreds if not thousands of instances of cases being torn up and thrown out because the police, you know, didn't comply with the Fourth Amendment when they were acquiring the evidence that they needed to secure a conviction. And so we release someone we know is guilty and then that person goes on and commits an offense. The question is, do you want to live in a world without those liberty protections? I don't. So I think we have to just accept that there is always going to be that it's always going to be the case that we are not going to be able to zero out our risk of being victimized. We're never going to zero out the risk of someone doing something bad. But that also doesn't mean that we have to create the conditions in which it's almost guaranteed that these things happen more than they should. It.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think that's, that's to me, such an important reminder that whether it's kind of the caricature of the tech vision of no, we can achieve paradise, you know, all of our problems are going to go away. The machines will know better than we do. Whether it's that or whether it's the left wing version of this, which is precautionary principle to the max. Everyone is fragile, everyone must be protected. Reduce risk to zero because otherwise it's an injustice. You know, microaggressions. It's, you know, a particle of injustice hit you while you were crossing the street, and now, you know, your life has been ruined. Whether it's either one of those two models, so much of what is at work there is an inability to trust and a transformation of the idea of justice and the idea of risk and really the idea of what a human being is. You know, how just what we've been created to be, what is that creature? You know, we are creatures that need to trust and that if we don't have that basis of trust, then we're going to spiral off really quickly in some directions that feel good initially or make us think that we're going to transcend our humanity somehow, but just lead consistently to bad outcomes.

[B]

I think that's exactly right. And also, I really appreciate what you just said about the human condition, because I do think that there is an element of the human condition that sort of feeds on taking risk. Risk in some way or another. You think about the things that we do in our lives that give us the biggest rush, that give us the biggest sort of flood of endorphins. Right. It's those moments where we're taking risks, essentially, right? Yeah. Whether if you like going to the gym and lifting weights. Right. Like, there's the pr. Right. You want to get that weight that may fall on your head if you don't do it. Right. There's that element of risk there. And then you feel really accomplished when you take it. Or sometimes it's moving across the country for a job that may or may not work out. Right. I mean, these are the things that really kind of make us come alive and feel alive. It's why roller coasters are so popular. It's why people go bungee jumping and skydiving and play sports. Right. I mean, I've had two surgeries and God knows how many injuries and broken bones from playing sports. But it's like knowing that that's a risk and doing and overcoming that is part of what gives life richness and meaning. And so that's what gives me confidence that we won't actually end up going so far down that road towards trying to zero out risk, at least if the majority continues to have its say in the political process.

[A]

And that's why leadership is so important. When you think about what is it that builds trust? How do people come to the decision that someone should be trusted? What kind of heuristic can you use? What kind of experiences lead you in the direction of going, like, all right, I know I can trust that guy or I'm willing to take a chance on that guy. And it's really, you know, oftentimes a matter of can you trust them in a high risk environment, can you trust them to exercise the discernment and the judgment that's going to lead to a successful outcome when they find themselves obligated to take risks like a first responder, inclined to take risks, like someone who, you know, whose excellence is really only going to show up in a high intensity environment, whether whether it's military or industrial or something like that, or even something as simple as how do they do raising a family, There are a lot of potential risks there too, as for sure, you know, and if you don't have leaders who are sort of publicly demonstrating to people that, yeah, it's going to be a rocky path sometimes, and sometimes you're going to find yourself in a situation where because of the speed of it or the intensity of it or what's at stake, you got to make a decision and you got to be ready to be held accountable by your fellow citizens for those decisions. Without that kind of attitude among people who find themselves somewhere, you know, whether it's at the top of their, of their nation or their city or even just their neighborhood, then you're just going to keep having these problems.

[B]

Well, I think that's exactly right. And you know, one of the interesting things about the trust issue with respect to leadership, particularly political leadership, is that I think our society is evolving in a way that is allowing us to better identify the sort of people that we can trust in the media landscape. And the way it's changing, I think is sort of part and parcel of that, you know, the growth of this kind of format. Right. The long form podcast conversation has been really fascinating for me. Right. I mean, you know, we, our politicians have had immense powers for as long as this country's existed, and by and large, we've made the choice about who's going to lead us based on, on really short snippets. You know, what the mainstream media tells us through its analysis should be the case. And we have learned that that's not actually the best way to figure out whether or not we can trust someone. And that a much better indicator is to sit them down for a couple of hours and have somebody ask them questions. And, you know, it's pretty hard to fake your way through in 1, 2, 3, 4 hour interview. That's right.

[A]

As Kamala Harris knows exactly, which is.

[B]

One of the reasons why I think we've seen the growth of the long form podcast, you know, people like Joe Rogan and you know, even comedians like Theo Vaugh. Right. I mean, why are politicians courting them? Why are they agreeing to go on these shows? Well, it's because that is the best way to demonstrate to the public that you mean what you say, that you've actually thought through the implications of the ideas that you're putting forth and that creates trust at bottom.

[A]

Yeah, I, I think that's a really great point. I mean, you know, I, I, I know as well as anyone, I guess, that, you know, at its worst, this kind of format can just be one more kabuki dance. You know, it's kind of an inside job and everyone's just going, exactly, exactly.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

Totally right. As I say, right, right, right. Yeah. But at its best, you know, we came into this, this like digital landscape as a, as a culture still really believing a lot of people that, that trust emerges, truth emerges from just the smartest people kind of arguing. Yeah, you know, and I'm making the case for this and you're making the case against it. And we have public debates, or maybe not public debates, maybe you put all the smartest guys in a room and you have them do their competing arguments and the truth sort of, you know, this goes all the way back to John Stuart Mill. And you know, this is probably not the place to do a whole John Stuart Mill thing.

[B]

It's my favorite philosopher, so.

[A]

And you know, and Mill was not a, Mill was not a, a dummy. But I think a lot of that kind of trust the elites to argue amongst themselves and they will produce the correct answer. That's really come under a lot of question, especially in this technological landscape. And so what this kind of format that you're talking about, you know, that's a little bit different. Yes, you have to know what you're talking about. Yes, you have to be able to go in depth over a period of time, but you also just have to be able to be like a real person who can have a real face to face interaction. And yeah, you're doing it for an audience somewhere out there, but it's really, you know, it's the two of you or the three of you or whatever, and that experience of actually just doing the face to face conversation thing and the conversation can, you know, bob and weave and take these turns and it's natural and it's more organic, that builds a kind of trust that isn't as chained to the Idea that, oh, my, the elite, you know, these are the people who are credentialed. They're the experts. I have to trust them. There's no alternative. Well, there is an alternative. And, you know, it's maybe early days in some respects, but I think people are starting to work that out. And I think that it isn't just, you know, folks just kind of having a brain fart on social media and that creating some kind of cloud that we all get lost in.

[B]

Right. Well, I think it's also democratized the sort of discernment of truth. And this is something that I do think Mill kind of accounted for when he talked about, you know, truth becoming apparent through its collision with falsehoods. And including the public in that process, by creating these conversations that can then be distributed to the entire American public, allows us to better collectively make that choice. We can see two people have an argument and say, okay, well, I think this person has the better of it. And you can go back and these things are recorded and you can. I've done this, right. I've replayed segments of podcasts 10, 12 times to really think through the implications of the argument being made before I make my own choice. And I think that's all to the good. And I hope that the sort of three minute cable news hit dies eventually. I'd much rather have a real conversation rather than go on preemptively deciding. I'm going to say one sentence when I get that question. It's a much more productive way about making political decisions.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. All right, final question. As a father.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You got a couple kids. Yes. So much of the discourse around family and having children and sort of public safety is a kind of captive to that extreme risk aversion. At the same time, you know, nobody wants to be walking their kid down the street and stepping over feces and needles and all the rest just thinking about raising a family, whether it's. Whether it's in New York City or whether it's just, you know, anywhere. Anywhere usa. How hopeful are you that we're going to find ourselves in a situation that we can make a path where it's not going to be complete risk aversion, but it's also not going to be the Wild West?

[B]

Pretty hopeful. You know, there was a moment where I would have been a little more pessimistic on this point. And look, there's still plenty of sources for pessimism here. I just watched a video of a woman being arrested for letting her son walk to a store by Himself, I think he was like 9 or 10 years old. It was like, I used to do that by myself in the early 90s in Brooklyn, you know, many such cases, you know, so. And I have wonderful parents. Right. I mean, this was not irresponsibility on their part. Yeah. But you also see, you know, the reaction that the work of people like Lenore Skanesi has gotten and this idea of free range parenting kind of cropping up and. And getting a lot of eyes. And so I do think that our instincts are by and large in the right place. And a lot of people still have clear memories of childhoods in which risk was part of life. And I think we realize, and psychologists like Jordan Peterson have been really, really great about this, that what gives people the confidence to go out and be leaders in their lives as adults are the experiences at a young age that they have overcoming challenges by themselves. And they're going to have to find themselves in those situations in which they need to make a choice. Now, maybe, you know, that's doing something that, you know, a parent might think is dumb. Right. I mean, there was, I. I moved out to Long island when I was 10, and there was this park that we used to play stick ball at, and, you know, they did some construction. And then one day there was this dirt matt mound. It's like, really? It rained. It was all packed. And we looked at the dirt mound and we said, I'm gonna jump that on my bike.

[A]

Gotta do it.

[B]

And it's, you know, if I'm a parent and I see my son about to do this, right, My instinct is gonna be like, wait, don't do this. I'm not wearing a helmet. You know, I go and, you know, thankfully landed, and it was great. My friend goes and he eats it, you know, and he's bleeding. I think he broke, you know, a couple of fingers in his hand. And, you know, I mean, I mean, it was bad.

[A]

This is how we separate the men from the boys.

[B]

But, you know, but it was the kind of thing that's like for both of us, Right. I mean, I gained confidence from overcoming that. He gained confidence from knowing that, you know, even if the bad thing happens, it's survivable. Right. It's not the end of the world.

[A]

That's huge.

[B]

And I think both of us were better off for that. And, you know, I think it's a sort of a moral crime to deny children the ability to have those experiences. And I think we intuitively are starting to understand that again.

[A]

I think so, too. Such a great note to end on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Rafael, Manuel, it's been a real pleasure.

[B]

Thank you so much for having me.

[A]

Thanks again.

[B]

All right.

[A]

All right. That's all the time we got. Till next time around. I am James Polis. This is Zero Hour. May God have mercy on us all.