An Army of Normal Folks - Before You Ask “What’s Wrong With Them?”, Listen To This

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

In this Shop Talk, Bill and Alex break down ACE scores - Adverse Childhood Experiences - and what the research says about how childhood trauma shows up decades later in our health, our relationships, and our choices. Bill shares his own score, and makes the case for why understanding this data might be the most important thing you can do before you walk into a tough neighborhood and wonder why people are the way they are. ARMY ACTIONS Subscribe to the podcast and rate & review us! Signup to join the Army, visit NormalFolks.org Follow us on social media @ArmyofNormalFolks Join or start an ANF local service club at https://normalfolks.org/service-clubs/ Take The 10 Level Challenge, "the hero's journey for service" at 10LevelChallenge.orgSupport the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks. Welcome to Shop Talk number 121. What do you think about that, Cassius? That's a ring right there, isn't it? Cassius, welcome to the shop. You're looking for anything? No, you ain't talking for that. It's his shop. It's not your... It is his shop.

Thanks for letting us in your shop, Cassius. Today... We do pay him red for his shop. That's right. We ain't living rent free. Shop number 121. Before you asked what's wrong with them, you're going to have to listen to this. We'll get to that in just a minute.

But what happened in 1905, 121 years ago today in honor of shot talk number 121? Yes, it's 1905. That's what said. Okay. This one's pretty incredible. Einstein had his miracle year. Have you heard this before?

No. At just 26, while working at the Swiss Patent Office, Albert Einstein produced a series of revolutionary papers. covering special relativity, the photoelectric effect, brownie in motion, molecular dimensions, and mass energy equivalence leading to E equals MC squared. Few individuals have ever had a more consequential year intellectually, all that in the same year. I wish I knew it all. No, five.

First of all, I can't believe it was that long ago because I think Einstein, I think, 40s and 50s. So that's pretty crazy. He was 26. Yeah. Holy smokes. how much of what percent of his brain was working. You know, we only use like 8% of our brain, right? We only use 8% of it?

8% of it? Yeah. And it's hypothesized that brilliance like this. People are using like 15%. Oh, wow. Yeah. I thought you're going to say a higher percentage. No, I think that's right.

You can Google it. Interesting. But I think that's true. Yeah. What else happened 121 years ago? Okay. You're going to love this one. Oh, boy.

Your favorite city was effectively born. Memphis? No, I guess your second favorite city. Vegas. Vegas, baby. I was not saying that thing's wrong. Memphis is a hundred or 221 years old. On May 15th, 110 acres of land were auctioned alongside the railroad. An event generally regarded as the founding of Las Vegas as a city. They wouldn't officially incorporate until 1911. I love it. Vegas is awesome. Now let me clear this up. don't think I'm some degenerate gambler all the time. Yes, I like to relax and play cards. But the Golden Steer, Pieroos, Hugo Seller. Are you naming restaurants right now?

Oscar. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Old school Vegas restaurants where you get great Italian and great steaks. And Oscar was Oscar Goodman. That's his restaurant. He was the mayor of Vegas back in the day.

and the title of his restaurant is Oscars, Beef, Booze and Braweds. Great. Yeah, I love all that. And then Lisa and I like to, you can take helicopter rides over the Grand Canyon. You can go out to the desert. There's actually a place.

Very few people know this. It's only an hour and 10 minute drive from the strip that you can go snow skiing under the winter. Huh. The street is incredible. Have you been to a show with a spear? Heck yeah. Who did you see?

You too. Open it. Why? We haven't talked about this. Oh, that's awesome. Incredible. Yeah. Awesome.

Anyway. You go to shows. Also, I know I've seen pictures of you and your son's golfing out there. We do all the things. That's twice. We love to golf. And so Lisa does her winter shopping for her clothes or her summer shopping for clothes. We go a couple times year.

Lisa does her shop and I play cards in the night. We go eat and go to the shows. We go to Raiders game, whatever. And it's just all right there. And I get to disconnect. That's why I love Vegas. It's not just like pulling slap machines 24 hours day. So it's just a lot.

I just love it. I love the excitement and the vibe of the talents. It would be fun. I've thought before like, hey, if we grow this even more, it would be great to do like an annual convention here in Memphis. Yeah.

But it could also be fun to do an event in Vegas. We need to. Like people to see that side of you and like have a fun trip with army members. You need to do whatever. Yeah. For sure. And I could set up a dinner at the Golden Steer. You would never be the same.

So, all right. Shop. number 121, before you ask what's wrong with them, you're going to have to listen to this right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. The long loading times, the glitchy video calls. That's your house asking for better internet. Switch to Bell Pure Fiber, Canada's most reliable internet awarded by Open Signal from $75

a month. Price guaranteed for two years on a two-year term and autopay credit. Visit bell.com for more detail. and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. My name is Josie Duffy Rice. I'm a journalist who covers the criminal legal system. And over my career, I've heard account after account

of prosecutorial misconduct, story after story of injustice. But I've never heard a story quite like this. The more I kept reading that stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over. We'll hypnotize him to strengthen that memory. So he went into a good france.

I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Listen to Examine the Backfire Effect on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case has a story. Every victim has a voice. But will it be heard? I'm Nancy Grace on Crime Stories.

We go beyond headlines to examine evidence, challenge the story we're fed, and pursue justice for victims and their families. Please join us at Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts. Hope you join us. I'll see you there, friend. Dear honies, this is goodbye. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Patra Mather's and her husband Michael nailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead.

Next stop, Wonderland. Patra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? I would have given a million reasons to not. leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to, I truly hope that Petra was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her?

Yes, I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's staff. I'm Leon Nafeck. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patriot and Michael's letters, as one married couple trying to understand another. Listen to death of an artist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like actor Stephen Root. I think for me to be any good or for any character act to be any good,

you've got to put enough of yourself and your empathy for people in it. I'm a people watcher. You see that guy going down the dream and go, yeah, I can use that. Open Igloo co-founder, Alia Muhammad. I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is going on in city politics, what is on renter's minds, and taking all of

that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. And actress and singer Melissa Eriko. Partnership took on a whole other meaning when I started making my own work. It's like you with a great actress or actor. It was best to come out of your trailer, full of life, and just face another person who's full of life and don't talk. Listen to Here's the thing on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Michael Imperioli. I want to tell you about my new podcast, Underground Zero. It's about what happened in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

We're looking at the opportunity of a lifetime for us and the other families. While the world was mourning, five powerful New York families saw an opportunity. The debris supposed to go to the city on salvage yard and some of the... If it will. They would go on to make millions of dollars. What's in the tunnels? Cobas, Sauvich. It could be worth half a billion.

And they would have made more if it hadn't been for one courageous cop. No, Dad, don't. You're going to need all of us. I'll call you when I can. Frank, be careful. Underground Zero, starring Steve Sharipa, Ray Abruzzo, and me, Michael Imperio. Would you be willing to see your family go to pieces? Some ways it already has.

Listen to Underground Zero on the Eye Heart Art Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What up, y'all. This your main man, Memphis Bleak right here. Host of that Rock Solid podcast. And each week, we bring in you exclusive looks inside music. Everything happening inside the culture. Some of the best conversations were the biggest names in the game.

You had a little bit more pressure to be good. And they didn't care if you was a girl. Like, you wasn't getting no points because you were the girl. If you're not trash, you better be not just good. You better be great. On rock solid, we're talking to rap legends, hit-making producers, rising stars from the golden era to the future of this hip-hop game, where we keep it 100% unfiltered and keep it nothing but rock solid, yeah. The thing about Jay, my opinion, is he's been so great at being seen, but mysterious. You know what I'm saying?

He don't got to come talk about nothing. You figure it out. So it's always a mystique and mysteriousness behind him, but it ain't like that. like you don't see him. Listen to Rock Solid on Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you streamed podcasts. All right, everybody. Welcome back.

So I just Googled something and forget part of what I said. We use 100% of our brains. The popular idea that humans only use 10% is a complete myth. Brain scans like PETs and FMRI show that nearly all regions of the brain are active throughout the day, even when we're sleeping. I think you only use 8% of your brain. Holy crap. I really did believe that I've read that a thousand times, but Harvard Health says, no, we use all of it.

We lost all of our smart listeners already, Bill, because I heard you say that the math thing and they tuned out. I do think there's a part of that that is like there's a portion, there's a piece of your brain that does cognitive reason and problems. solving and it's a bigger portion of the brain, but whatever. I completely, so anyway, want to clear that up before you all email me about how stupid I am and everything else. So hopefully you're losing. Because you've been to Vegas too much. Yeah, but the Vegas too much. That's exactly right. Before you ask what's wrong with them, quotes, what's wrong with them? Listen to this. There's a question we ask all of the time when somebody's struggling. What's wrong with that person? Why can't he keep a job? Why is that kid always

angry? Why can't they just get their act together? Pause. I think the folded arms like doesn't come across well, just visually. Please don't get this out. I'm going to, the reason I'm doing it is it's a little chilly in here. You're going to turn it up here? Can I do it this phone? All right. How about this? Can I do it this right? Yeah, sure. Oh, how about this one? This is all sitting in the episode. Okay. This is right. Okay. So why can't these people get their act together like this?

There's another question we probably ought to ask them first. What happened to them? Those two questions sound similar, but they're just not. And understanding the difference can completely change the way you see people. There's a body of research around something called adverse child. experience. Childhood experiences. Yeah. Adverse childhood experiences. Aces. Basically, it's pretty stunning. What happens to you when you're a kid will show up decades later. And not just in your emotional health, but in your physical health, your relationships, your behavior, and even how long you live,

And here's the part, you've got to get through your brain. The more adversity somebody experienced as a kid, the greater their risk became for a whole bunch of other problems later in life. So, listen, risk is not destiny. An ACE score is not a crystal ball. People overcome horrific childhood experiences all the time. We've highlighted many of them on our show. And you've talked about yours. You're relatively normal.

Relatively normal. First of all, I think you're giving far too credit. I have far too much credit. I don't even think I'm relatively normal. I'm normal-ish. But childhood experiences matter, and frankly, that ought to be common sense. Back in the 90s, the CDC and Kaiser Permanente studied more than 17,000 adults in Southern California. These weren't primarily people living on the street or incarcerated or people somebody had gone out looking for because their lives were falling apart.

They were members of a major health plan coming in for medical care, meaning they largely had jobs. We're part of the normal folks population. Researchers asked them about experiences they had before they were 18 years old. Eventually those experiences became what we now commonly call the 10 aces. They fall into three broad buckets. First, abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and yes, sexual abuse, which happens far too often our country's children.

Then neglect, physical neglect, emotional neglect, and then dysfunction or serious challenges inside the household. A parent was substance abuse, mental illness in the household, domestic balance, parents separating or divorcing, a household member going to prison. Each adverse child experience you've had counts as one. So if your parents divorce, that's one ace. If there's alcoholism in the home, that's another and so on. That's your

ACE score. Now, this is important. And ACE score does not, don't confuse it, does not measure how bad your childhood was. It doesn't capture every kind of adversity. It doesn't tell us how often something happened or how severe it was, or what positive relationships you had around you are the good things that happen to offset the bad things. It's a population-level research tool. It's not a diagnosis, but what research is discovered is absolutely extraordinary. They found that scientists call a dose response relationship that's fancy language for as the number of aces went up, so did the risk. of bad outcomes in adulthood.

In the original ACE study, people with four or more ACEs, compared with people reporting none, had roughly a four to 12 times the risk for outcomes, including alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempts. Four aces. Not 10. Four. A later study looking specifically at adult mental health broke people out all the way from zero aces to six or more. Compared with adults reporting no aces, the adjusted odds of having attempted suicide would up approximately two times with one ace, four times with two aces, seven times with three aces, nearly eight times with four aces, and ten times as likely with five.

And among people reporting six or more aces, the odds were even more than 24 times higher. Again, that does not mean somebody with six aces is absolutely going to attempt suicide. Most won't. It just means that if you had those many more aces, you have 24 times higher incidents or possibility of committing suicide. We're talking about differences and odds across populations. But if you're trying to understand why somebody might be struggling as an adult, that's one hell of a piece of information. And tragically, the impact of ACEs isn't limited to mental health challenges. The CDC says ACEs have now demonstrated the kind of graded relationship with more than 40 health and well-being outcomes.

Think about that. Childhood adversity showed relationships with things that on the surface don't even seem related. related to childhood, adults reporting four or more aces had compared with adults reporting none about 1.8 times the odds of coronary heart disease, 2.1 times the odds of a stroke, 2.8 times the odds of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. So somehow, experiences that happen when we're six, eight, and 10, and 12 years old, echo inside our bodies decades later. How would that happen? Researchers believe that there are multiple pathways.

One is behavior. Imagine growing up with your nervous system constantly unalert. You don't know if dad's coming home drunk. You don't know if somebody's going to hit somebody tonight. You don't know whether the person who's supposed to protect you is going to protect you or hurt you. then somebody discovers at 15 that alcohol makes that feeling all go away for a few hours or cigarettes calm them down or numb them down or 30 years later we see alcoholism and lung disease happen and we call that behavior irrational maybe originally it wasn't irrational at all

maybe it was a coping mechanism that worked until it didn't there's also increase in understanding of toxic stress a kids developing brain and body weren't designed to have the emergency alarm ringing every single hour of the day. Long-lasting activation of stress systems can affect the nervous endocrine and immune system and can influence attention, impulse control, decision-making, and how a person responds to stress. In other words, the body keeps score. And it keeps score in ways we didn't fully appreciate for a long, long time, there's another study that is probably the most dramatic of all. Researchers followed people from the original ACE cohort and looked at mortality.

Among participants who died during the follow-up period, those who had reported six or more ACEs, died at an average of about 60 to 61 years old. For people with no ACEs, about 80. 20 years difference in life expectancy. And if you're sitting there thinking, okay, but we're talking about some tiny group of people with horrific childhoods. No, we are not. In more recent CDC data, about 61% of adults reported at least one ACE. 61%.

1 and 6 reported four or more. That's about 15%. Look around the room with 30 people. Statistically, several of them may have four or more of these experiences in their history. And you may have absolutely no idea who, you know, I have eight. So you have done the, were you doing it while, you were thinking about it while we were recording this? Wow.

Do you want to list them or no? Well, five divorces. Yeah. Right. I've been shot at when I was a child. That would be six. You're around alcoholism too. You're around alcoholism as well?

Yeah, that's seven and I can't remember the eighth. Oh, I wouldn't. say actually i think moving might even be one too like you moved a lot yeah i would say that's an emotional yeah that's eight so i'm 58 i'm be dead in two years that did not out you but you occasionally pick up cigarettes right but here's the difference the real difference is despite all of it and this is really important to know despite all of it my mom loved me and she worked hard to keep me in good schools and in church and doing the right things and so despite all of it of which she was the root of most of it the flip side and the irony is

she killed herself to take care of me so i think that's the that's the important part of understanding ACEs is it does not calculate the good that offsets the bad and the one person that you can rely on or the good experiences that you had that offset the bad. So, I mean, I would argue someone with eight aces that didn't have a good parent in their life or that ended up in foster care and didn't have love and didn't have all of that are a much, much, much, much, of four aces with that is a much higher risk than an eight aces with me. So you see what I'm saying? So it's really important that our listeners understand.

It is data-driven and it is scientific, but there are other factors that offset the number of bases that we have to keep. I think about it. But you've also talked about on the podcast plenty of times, too. Like you were working on a lot of your mental issues until you're 40s, right? So, I mean, you were dealing with it. par or faster childhood. And I got Lisa.

You know, I had Lisa. I had Lisa at a young age. And having an unconditional loving partner mattered. I had my four children. I mean, it's just, you know, there's offsets to it. But I think it's real data. And I mean, it's just like you. I think if you're divorced and your four children who I love and are beautiful and everything

else, they're happy and very, very well adjusted. Yes, they have the ace from the divorce, but they also have their father. who kills himself for them and takes them everywhere. That will matter to them. That will have an impact. But if you were a dad that said, I'm divorced down, you dumped them on, and you went and saw them at Christmas and Thanksgiving, then that one ace of divorce would be much more profound in their life than it is as it sits today.

So I'm just saying there are levels of aces, and we can't just... Well, even in that case, too, that probably would probably be considered as emotional abuse. So it actually would be another ace on top of it. So all I'm saying is, it is important data, it's real, it does have precursors, it does paint from a high altitude view that we have to understand that childhood trauma makes us sick in many different ways, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. But the number of aces alone don't tell the whole story because there's other environmental impacts that can make them worse or all stuff. them. So one ace could be a really soft ace, a medium ace, or a bad ace. And so when you pile those up on top of each other, that tells more of the story as an individual. But as a group, I think it's important to understand that when we look at something, someone and say,

why the hell they like that? Why are they doing this? What is wrong with them? Many people who you may not even expect are creating an enormous amount of childhood trauma that data suggests that's why they're doing quote that and we need to be a little more patient, a little more open, a little more understanding, and have a little more grace oftentimes with people than we do because we don't know the misery that they're carrying around from when they were six or seven or eight and hadn't gotten over yet. So that's actually the greatest reason I wanted us to do this. is to increase our empathy.

You know, a lot of us aren't as, you know, aware of this whole ACEs. And after learning about it, I learned a lot more, you know, as we dove into this today. And I think it'll give all of us greater empathy as we meet people. And then the second reason is to help people overcome the ACEs. I mean, your stories, you know, you just mentioned it with Lisa, too. But I often think about when you talk about your coaches, right, who are those constants in your life and taught you so much. And so it is also a call to the army of normal folks of we need to be that person. and for people who have aces.

We can be ace equalizers. Seriously? Yeah. For real. I mean, a bad ace can be equalized by a good person in a child's life. They really can. And we can be ace equalizers, for sure. You just invented a term.

Accidentally. I invented an army of normal folks just like this accident. So, ace equalizers. But we can be ace equalizers, and that's a real thing. Well, you're talking to you also made me think, like, we never want bad things to happen to people. but at the same time, a lot of the most successful people in our culture, and that's more successful to find as the world one in terms of creating interesting businesses or financial.

A lot of, I mean, a high, high proportion of them have had childhood ACEs and things that they've overcome. And almost the practice of overcoming things rather than a very easy, you know, soft childhood. And it's fascinating to see that. Just think of the number of ACEs and 18-year-old hats. age out of foster care. Just think of them. And then think about this data. And now ask yourself, why might they be in prostitution?

Why might they have drug addiction? Why might they struggle keeping a job or staying in a relationship or have children out of what luck? And why may their life be off the rails? Or for God's sake, just count their aces. And then count the number of ACE equalizers they had in their life or didn't. I mean, it's tough, stuff. And so why is there a call to an army of normal folks?

We want to fix this. We want to be ace equalizers. But the other thing is, when you go into tough areas and you get frustrated and you think, why these people like this, don't just automatically assume they want to be difficult. It's more than likely they're victims of a number of issues that piled aces on top of them that they're struggling to overcome. Well said, Bill. Well done. that is shop talk number 121. If you enjoy this episode, rate it, share it, review it,

write me at bill at normalfolks. us and talk about it. Join a service club, start a service club, join the army at normalfokes.us. Dot org now is the new website. I've only been telling you that for two months now. The new website is dot org, normalfokes.org. Yeah, go to that.

Bauer merch there. and that's it. And so that's shopper number 121. I'm Bill. This is Alex. We'll see you next week. In 1986, a man named Scott Macklam was killed in broad daylight. Police quickly found their suspect.

Prosecutors convicted him. But now, almost 40 years later, I'm reexamining this case. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Listen to Examine the Backfire Effect on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up, y'all, this your main man, Memphis Bleak right here, host of that rock solid podcast.

And each week, we bring in you exclusive looks inside music, everything happening inside the culture. Some of the best conversations were the biggest names in the game. You had a little bit more pressure to be good. And they didn't care if you was a girl. You wasn't getting no points. If you're not trash, you better be not just good. You better be great. Listen to Rock Solid on Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you streamed podcasts.