Ep 38. Dr. Jens Ludwig explains his new book 'Unforgiving Places'

Host: David Riedman, creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database.

Guest: Dr. Jens Ludwig, Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, Director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, codirector of the Education Lab, and codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the economics of crime. The Crime Lab was the recipient of a $1 million MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions:

1. Why does gun violence happen?

2. Is there anything we can do about it?

Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflicts, especially arguments that escalate into shootings.

Progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the ten-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.

Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence

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David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, Chief Data Officer at a global risk management firm, and a tenure-track professor. Listen to my weekly podcast—Back to School Shootings—or my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and my article on CNN about AI and school security.