Malcolm Gladwell
Appearances
NPR News Now
NPR News: 03-20-2025 4PM EDT
When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging, and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 04-10-2025 11AM EDT
When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging, and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Thank you. Thanks for having me on.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Yeah, well, it's funny. You did an in-depth analysis of the case, which I just listened to last night. I did the same thing on my podcast, two episodes on the case. You're right, reaching different conclusions. Although I think there are lots of interesting... issues that you raise, it's a complicated case. I think we could start there. More complicated, I think, than people realize.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And complicated by the fact that, as you go into this in some detail in one of your episodes, that Floyd, at the time of his arrest, is not a well man. He's on fentanyl. His heart's lungs are full of fluidness. He's got, what is it, 75% blockage of his arteries to his heart. So it's complicated. And in difficult cases, you know that legal axiom, difficult cases make bad law.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
We're in a difficult case here. My big issue with your analysis is... I think when you look at the autopsy results and you see that George Floyd was a very sick man before his arrest, he's vulnerable, that supports the argument against Chauvin. It doesn't undermine it.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
The second thing I would say, and this bears in this as well, is that I'm much more focused on Thomas Lane, who is the first of the police officers on the scene, And Thomas Lane throughout the entire incident is constantly telling Derek Chauvin to get off Floyd, that Floyd is really not well, that he's having difficulty breathing.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And Lane is the one who brings up excited delirium, which you bring up as you see that as that. I think that's, there's where you and I agree. I think that's why he dies. He dies because of some combination of his drug use, his preexisting conditions, and the fact that he's in a position where he's in respiratory distress because he's prone, right? He's got weight on his...
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Sometime on his neck and largely on his back and chest. And have you ever been, Ben, have you ever been in the exact position that Floyd was in? I had someone do that to me. It's really hard to breathe.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
They're yelling. The people who are around are yelling for Chauvin to get off Floyd.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Yeah. Yeah, I did the second of, I did two-part series on the case, and the second part was essentially a defense of Thomas Lane. And I don't think that Thomas Lane deserved to go to prison. Thomas Lane, to my mind, is the only voice of reason at the scene. He's the one who says this man is not well. Thomas Lane's the one who calls 911.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And he calls 911 not just because Floyd has cut his mouth, but because he believes that he is suffering from excited delirium and that he's in a very vulnerable state. And then Lane says to... Chauvin repeatedly, this guy's not doing well. You got to get off him and you got to put him in the recovery position.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
I would also point out that when you was making a distinction between these two, is he someone who was going to die because he had these preexisting issues or does he die because of uh, positional asphyxia, you know, the, what the cops did to him.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
My suggestion is that it's, it's a combination of both that the reason why, and I wanted to, I brought up this morning, I was looking at the, um, the Minneapolis use of force guidelines and is, uh, one of the things they say is the maximal restraint technique, which is what
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Chauvin's doing, shall only be used in situations where handcuffed subjects are combative and still pose a threat to themselves, officers, or others, or could cause significant damage to property if not properly restrained.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And I think the issue here is that, and the reason everyone got so upset with Chauvin's behavior, is that having restrained Floyd, having gotten him under control, he doesn't get off. And you're not supposed to do that have someone in that position for nine minutes. And the reason it's so dangerous to put someone in that position for nine minutes is not that she'll kill.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
If someone put me in that position for nine minutes, I'm not going to die, right? I'll be very uncomfortable. I'll be short of breath, but I won't die. But the reason you don't do it for 90 minutes to someone who you've just arrested is you don't know what their underlying conditions is, right? You don't know whether they have a heart condition. You don't know whether they have...
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
COVID and lungs filled with fluid. And so you have to be careful. There's a point that the Minneapolis head of detectives makes in the trial when he says, he repeats that police adage, when someone is in your custody, he's in your care. And Lane has that position. He's like, this man is now in our care and he's suffering. And Chauvin seems indifferent, and that's the issue now.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Let me ask you this. So one of the things I think that the difference in the approach that you took in your series and the approach that we took in ours was that we were focused on the question of whether Derek Chauvin was a good police officer. And you were focused on the question of whether the legal system treated him fairly. And they're different questions, as you point out.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
But I would love for you to respond to our question. Do you think that the way he conducted himself on the night of the George Floyd arrest, was good police work.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Thomas Lane does not believe that Derek Chauvin was doing good police work on the night of the George Floyd arrest. So there are other- officers, peer officers, who look, who were there on the scene, who were aghast at what Chauvin was doing. Genevieve Hansen, who is one of the first to arrive on the scene, who was a firefighter, a Minneapolis firefighter who was out for a walk that night.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
She's the one, one of the most vocal voices in the crowd who's screaming to Chauvin, get off him. He's dying, get off him. He's dying. She's someone who's very familiar with first responding work. And she was aghast at his behavior.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
The chief of... The 9-11 dispatcher on the night of... Who was watching the whole thing on... In Minneapolis Police Department had a camera on the corner of 38th and Chicago. So she was able to watch it. She's the first person to watch the video. She watched it in real time from the 9-11 dispatch office. She's so unbelievably...
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
shocked at what she's seeing that she asks whether the camera's frozen. She can't believe he's still on, he's still doing that technique for nine minutes on Floyd. And she calls for the first time in her seven years as a, as a 911 dispatcher calls the Sergeant in the local precinct and says, you've got to get down there. Something bad is going on. So there's lots of people who,
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
credible people that night who are observing his technique and are saying, this is not the way police officers are supposed to handle a case. And if the guy has been saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, as you point out correctly, this is a crucial point that I'm so happy you made. Floyd saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, before they put him on the ground, right?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
It's the first thing he says. He's clearly in distress even before they put handcuffs on him. But if a man's saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, over and over again, the last thing you want to do is put him in a prone position with your knee on his neck and his back.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And that is worse than that. It's worse than that. We can talk about revealed preference. What police officers did following that case was to leave the police forces around the country in droves.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Yeah. No, I and believe me, I have been writing about this for much of my career. I think it's a deeply important and fascinating question that this is the hardest. This is one of the hardest professions we have. And the consequences of screwing up or making a bad judgment call as a police officer are very often that you go to prison.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Um, and so that's not true of, you know, if I make a bad judgment call, I don't go to prison, right? Nobody shoots me. Nobody, you know, so I totally understand that it's hard. Um, one of the things I did when I was doing my series on revisionist history about this was called up a bunch of police chiefs.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And I asked them on this question about, you know, about had them walk to the George Floyd case with me to get their perspective. And what they talk about is it is absolutely the case that a lot of police work is inherently complicated.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And one, I talked to this really wonderful police chief named Daniel Oates, who was talking about, you can't even use use of force complaints as a proxy for how good a police officer is. It's just, there's too much noise in the system. You don't know. It depends on where they're working. And you make this point, where they're working, how many hours they're working.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
But he did say, look, at any given time, there are on a police force, 5% of your force is not up to the task. And one of the real public health, his take-home lesson from George Floyd was, it is too hard for police officers to get rid of the 5% who aren't any good. And that's union rules.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And if you told me that the number one reform that came out of George Floyd was that we cracked down on the excessive protections for bad police officers that union contracts have created, I would say I'm happy. That's not what happened. And that's one of the reasons I'm not happy with it.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
But I do think there are really thoughtful ways in which we could have responded to this that would have made policing better. And giving, you know, and this guy Daniel Oster and many other police officers, many other police chiefs would say, look, we could prevent these cases in the future if you just gave us a little more discretion about who we can hire and fire on our police departments.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
It's impossible to fire at that police officer.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Yeah, it's funny. I was doing my research for my series on vicious history, and I read this really, really thoughtful analysis of the case, talking about this question of union regulations and how collective bargaining agreements with police unions have made it really hard to fire bad cops, and that's a public policy reform we really need to push forward.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And I realized when I finished reading it, it was written by someone who was high up at Black Lives Matter. So the point is, they did say this, but it didn't, you're right, it's not, I thought this was a really important part of the message that got ignored or, and they themselves weren't making this argument by the end. And I think that was a mistake.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
I think that if I was redoing, rethinking the Black Lives Matter response in retrospect, I'd do it differently. I think they should have talked much more about those kinds of very pragmatic structural changes we could make to the system that would make it easier for police officers to do their job. I'm totally with you, by the way, on hiring more police. That's, you know...
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
We have misallocated in America. We spend way too much money on prisons and way too little money on cops. And every criminologist who's ever studied crime will tell you that it is such a better investment to invest upfront in the prevention of crime than it is to invest at the end of the process. But there's something else I want to bring up with you.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
on show then we're doing too much agreeing here Ben we're supposed to be at each other's throats so I wanted to here's my biggest problem with your series I think I read I think I listened to it all now correct me if I'm wrong I don't believe you talked about the John Pope case No, I didn't. So the John Pope case is the one where I really... It's from three years earlier.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And it's a mom calls 911 and says, my son has assaulted me. And we have all of the body cam footage, the whole thing.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Because to my mind... That case, which is Chauvin goes into a room and there's a 14-year-old boy playing on his phone and Chauvin says, get up. And the boy says, I didn't do anything. My mom's drunk. She always calls 9-11. Chauvin says, get up. The boy slowly gets up and Chauvin says,
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
after like five seconds, goes to the boy, smacks him over the head repeatedly with his flashlight, draws blood, puts him in a choke hold, throws him on the ground, and then puts his knee on his neck and his other knee on his back and holds him there for 13 minutes. Now, when you see that, you're like, this was a kid, a 14-year-old. Every time I watch that video, I start crying.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And after watching that video, I was like, Chauvin is not a police officer. You can't do that to a 14-year-old kid whose mom's drunk. I just saw that he's in the wrong profession. He's got to do something else. And to my mind, this whole thing, the other cops, we see it in what's called the John Pope video. There are like six other cops in the room.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And when Chauvin gets on the boy's neck, and the boy's whimpering like a 14-year-old would. You have kids, right? Yeah. The way that a kid would, who doesn't understand what's going on. Why is this man like beating me up with a flashlight and sitting on my neck because my mom's drunk? Well, it's, listen, again, this is heartbreaking. And the other thing was the other cops all file out of the room.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
They can't take it. Like they know that Chauvin is a bad egg. Okay.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
But in retrospect, it's a clue to the kind of police officer Derek Chauvin is.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
The only significance of the John Pope video is that, and this points to a structural problem within the Minneapolis Police Department. No one seems to have watched that video until after the Chauvin case. But had someone watched it at the time, I think that there would have been serious questions raised about Chauvin's future on the Minneapolis Police Department.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
And we would never have had George Floyd case because he wouldn't have been around to do it. I mean, so it does say, I do think that there is a management failure here where the reason we have these body cam cameras is that they do collect, you know, meaningful evidence about an officer's behavior and the situation in which they're operating. And that video is,
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
You know, the Floyd video is complicated. The John Poe video is not complicated. He's beating up a kid. Did you watch it, Ben?
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Yeah, I know you like facts over feelings, but sometimes feelings tell us something important about a situation.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screw-Up
Yeah, Ben, it was a pleasure.
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WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry
When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging, and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR.