John McWhorter & Jens Ludwig – The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
The Glenn Show
Glenn Loury
4.8 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Video Links
0:00 How Jens got interested in American gun violence
2:45 What’s “unexpected” about the origins of gun violence?
5:29 Race and the culture of gun violence
9:30 Ground News ad
11:20 Are high rates of gun violence a cultural issue or an equilibrium?
17:09 Is urban gun violence the result of rational behavior?
24:34 The link between Kahnemanian “fast thinking” and violent conflict
36:46 Are gun violence interruptions scalable?
40:52 The role of urban design in reducing crime and violence
47:31 Jens: Gang-motivated crime may not account for as much violence as its seems
50:43 Rehabilitating “Broken Windows”
53:47 Jens’s “pathological pragmatism”
Recorded June 13, 2025
Links and Readings
Jens’s new book, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow
William Julius Williams’s book, Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Social Policy
Jane Jacobs’s book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Melissa Kearney’s book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind
George Kelling and James Q. Wilson’s classic Atlantic article, “Broken Windows”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to the Glenn Show at glenlawry.substack.com. |
| 0:06.7 | As a subscriber, you will receive new episodes on Mondays instead of Fridays and get access to ticket pre-sales to live events, monthly Q&A's with Glenn Laurie and John McWhorter,, exclusive content and other benefits. Thank you. |
| 0:23.5 | Hi, everybody. This is Glenn Lowry. You've tuned in to The Glenn Show. I'm here with my regular |
| 0:28.4 | conversation partner, John McWhorter, and our special guest this week, who is Yens Ludwig, |
| 0:34.5 | who's professor at the University of Chicago, an economist and criminologist, |
| 0:40.0 | who's the author of the new book out from the University of Chicago Press called Unforgiving |
| 0:47.3 | Places, the Hidden Origins of American Gun Violence. So thanks for joining us, Yins. |
| 0:54.6 | Thanks so much for having me on. |
| 0:56.0 | I'm really delighted to be here. |
| 0:58.6 | And it's good to see you again, John. |
| 1:00.1 | It's been a while since we talked. |
| 1:01.9 | It's been a bit. |
| 1:02.7 | That's right. |
| 1:03.3 | It's summer now. |
| 1:04.2 | That's right. |
| 1:04.9 | Yeah, we're taking a month break here in the month of June. |
| 1:08.3 | This conversation won't post until sometime in July, but I miss you, |
| 1:13.9 | John. I miss you too, Glenn. We've got to get it going again. Where do we get lost? |
| 1:19.8 | Jens. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How do you come from Germany to the United States to be a |
| 1:26.9 | leading expert on gun violence in the country? |
| 1:29.8 | Yeah, maybe not the most common back. |
| 1:31.5 | Good question. |
... |
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