Hidden True Crime - Forensic Psychologist Analyzes Alec Baldwin's Involuntary Manslaughter Trial

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Forensic Criminal Psychologist Dr. John Matthias discusses key elements surrounding Alec Baldwin and the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of "Rust" About Hidden True Crime: Lauren Matthias was a television reporter for a decade and she and her husband, Dr. John Matthias, a forensic criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders of Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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What I'm talking about is Alec Baldwin versus New Mexico. He is charged of a famous Hollywood movie star with manslaughter when it comes to the death of Helena Hutchins, an incredible cinematographer and director. And they were on the set of Rust in New Mexico shooting a movie where Alec Baldwin was both the lead actor on the film as well as the producer. And Alec Baldwin, the gun he was holding was pointed at Helena and fired and shot and killed this incredibly talented woman and mother and wife. It was a, has been a devastating loss for many, many, many. Her life was taken too quickly and her children are now motherless and she was doing an incredible job in the film industry. A very creative, incredible woman is from everyone that has talked about her.

So that is an upcoming trial that is actually starting, jury selection starts July 9th, Tuesday. And we have an announcement. Should I just jump to it, Dr. John? Yep, sure. Why not? Why not? He's now said two words tonight, but don't worry. He will be saying a lot more after I conclude.

So why not? Well, we're going to be covering this trial ahead and true crime, obviously. This is why we are starting now discussing this upcoming trial. But I am going to go. I am going to the trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I leave shortly, and I will be there reporting as well as podcasting. So I plan to do my lunch lives or midday lives in between during the trial. In addition to that, we plan on doing podcasts nightly or every other night, depending on the information from the trial today.

And for those of you that no one have been listening to us from the beginning, you know that we covered Hannah Gutierrez trial, the armorer, and did a full episode on that verdict where she was found guilty and charged in Helena Hedgen's death. All right, John, now that I've talked for a very, very long time, maybe you should take it away because I have a feeling many people are thinking get to it. Yeah, so let's talk about this upcoming trial, and I'll try to set the stage for what's going to happen or what I think is going to happen and what the important questions are and what some of the important things to look for might be. So Alec Baldwin did an interview with George Stephanopoulos back in 2021, and this was a couple months after the, after Helena. was killed. And at the time, he said that there was only one question. And he said there was only one

important question on this case, and that is where did the live round come from? In the aftermath of the shooting, a torrent of criticism. The first thing you do when you pick up that gun is you make sure that it's never pointed at anybody. He should have known that an AD handing you a gun and saying it's cold isn't the same as several people showing you an empty gun. If I were holding that gun, I would have checked it, wouldn't you? Mm-hmm. People said to me, I mean, I got countless people online saying, you idiot, you never

pointed gun at someone. Well, unless you're told it's empty. And it's the director of photography who's instructing you on the angle for a shot we're going to do. And she and I had this thing in common where we both thought it was empty and it wasn't. And that's not her responsibility, that's not my responsibility, whose responsibility remains to be seen. Well, there are some who say you're never supposed to point a gun at anyone on a set no matter what. Unless the person is the cinematographer who's directing me where to point the gun for her camera angle. That's exactly what happened.

That day I did exactly what I've done every day on that movie. Which is what? Which is that there's an armorer there, and that word is new to me. in the years I've been in this. What did you call it? It was a prop guy or woman. And the prop person would come and sometimes they would insist on demonstrating for you and the camera crew. They take the gun.

If it was a contemporary gun, they show you the chamber, they show you the clip. They'd say, the gun is cold. And you're looking to go, thank you. And in the 40 years... Sometimes that would happen. Not all the time. Well, but no, no, sometimes they wouldn't demonstrate to me. Some insisted on demonstrating.

They would do the demonstration for everybody there right before we roll the camera. or rehearsed. Then there were others who they didn't do that because I trusted them to do the job. And again, this is not just me pointing a gun at somebody else, people pointing guns at me. I've gotten shot and killed in films before where people had to shoot a flash round at me,

and I trusted them to do their job. And in the 40 years I've been in this business all the way up until that day, I never had a problem. How many times do you think you handled a gun in those 40 years? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. What amazes me is how many bullets, how many rounds of bullets do you believe have been fired on the sets of movies and TV shows in the last 75 years? No idea.

Right. You could even be above a billion. You've had hundreds and hundreds of millions of bullets fired on the sets of films and TV shows. And four or five people were killed. Now, those deaths are tragic and abhorrent. And believe me, I would do. anything in my power. I would do anything in my power to undo what was done. I don't know how that bullet arrived in that gun. I don't know. But I'm all for doing anything that will take us to a place where this is less likely to happen again. Every single time I'm handed a gun on a

set. Every time, Martin, they hand me a gun. I look at it, I open it, I show it to the person I'm pointed it to, we show it to the crew. Every single take, you hand it back to the armor when you're done, you do it again. Everyone does. Everybody knows it. How do you respond? to actors like George Clooney, you say that every time they were handed a gun, they checked it themselves. Well, there were a lot of people who felt it necessary to contribute some comment to the situation, which really didn't help the situation at all. You have your, if your protocol is you check the gun every time, well, good for you. Good for you. You know, I mean, I probably handled weapons as much as any other actor in films with an average career.

Again, shooting or being shot by someone. And in that time, I had a protocol, and it never let me down. Why did you choose in your 40 years not to check the gun yourself? What I was taught by someone years ago was, as I said, if I took a gun and I popped a clip out of a gun or I manipulated the chamber of a gun, they would take the gun away from me and redo it. The proper person said, don't do that when I was young. And they'd say, one thing you would need to understand is we don't want the actor to be the last line of defense against a catastrophic breach of safety with the gun.

My job, they told me, man or woman, my job is to make sure the gun is safe and then I hand you the gun and I declare the gun safe. The crew's not relying on you to say that it's safe. They're relying on me to say that it's safe. When that person who was charged with that job handed me the weapon, I trusted them and I never had a problem.

And this was from the beginning of your career. From day one, there's one person that's supposed to make sure that what is in the gun is right and that what's wrong is not in the gun. One person has that responsibility to maintain the gun. What is the actor's responsibility?

I guess that's a tough question because the actor's responsibility going this day forward is very different than it was the day before that. Now I can't, first of all, I can't imagine I'd ever do a movie that had a gun in it again. And I can't. When you say what is the actor's responsibility, the actor's responsibility is to do what the prop armorer tells them to do. And we did not have a problem. I mean, I understand there was an accidental discharge at one point on the set of a blank round, but we did not have a problem for me until that day.

Everything gets slowed down as a Pruder film ask here. And the issue with that is, there's only one question to be resolved, only one. That is, where did the live round come from? I basically agree with that. I think that, because if you remove a live round from any prop guns, so he was using a pro- If you remove any live rounds from any gun on that set, you're not going to get a fatality.

He asked that question. I think that's the right question. Where did the live round come from? Which, by the way, still hasn't been answered. So it was partially answered in the Hannah Gutier's Reed trial. So we know now that Hannah Gutier's Reed was convicted of involuntary mine slaughter. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison. She's in the process of requesting, I think she's asking for an early,

departure from prison maybe a couple months early. I think she's asking, she's already put in a request. So we have that conviction, which partially answers that question. So we don't know for sure where the live round came from. It does appear that Hannah and or her father, Thelrede, may have brought that round onto the set. So as far as we know, that they found seven live rounds, seven live rounds among hundreds of other dummy rounds and blanks. And so it's presumed that those live rounds came from other movie sets or that Thal have may have brought them on the set. It's not clear.

I think that's the important question because without that round, without that live round that was put into the prop gun, there's no fatality here. And so when Hannah was convicted, I think there was some speculation that maybe the charges would be dropped against Alec Baldwin, and certainly his lawyers tried to do that. The history of this case is that charges were brought against Alec initially, and then they were dismissed. And then apparently they tested this prop gun, the FBI tested it. And they found

that the trigger had to be pulled for it to discharge. And so once that additional testing happened, then they reinstated the charges. And so the question now shifts from, in this trial, the question shifts from, where did the live round come from, although I still think that's the main question to who pulled the trigger. And during his interview with George Stephanopoulos, Ehrlich Baldwin said, essentially, he pulled the hammer back on the gun, and then, quote, I let go of the hammer of the gun and it went off. Set the scene right before that happened. You're sitting in a pew in the church? Right. What's the scene supposed to be?

The scene is the two guys are there who have got me, uh, uh, uh, uh, or, you're sitting. you know, cornered, and they think I'm shot pretty bad, and I'm kind of wilting, and they have a gun. And then the sound outside distracts them, and I would draw the gun out of my holster, pull the gun up like that, and start to cock the pistol cut. I'm handed a gun, and someone declares, they said, this is a cold gun.

Dave Halls? The first AD. In my years on the sets of film, Hot Gun meant that there was a charge in there, and Cold Gun meant there was nothing in there. When he's saying, this is a cold gun, what he's saying to everybody on the set If you can relax, the gun is empty.

That's what cold gun means. Well, cold gun means there's no charge in there. There could be dummy rounds. A dummy round looks like a real bullet, but it's completely inert. It contains no explosive charge. And you were rehearsing that scene. Was it an actual rehearsal? There's some disagreement about that,

whether it was a formal rehearsal at that time. This is a marking rehearsal where I'm going to show her. She's standing next to the camera. She's got a monitor here. The camera is here filming that way. me that way. She takes a monitor that is his monitor, the operator, and turns it toward her. It swiveles. And she says to me, hold the gun lower. Go to your right. Okay, right there. I do that. Now, show it a little bit lower. And she's kidding me. To position the gun, everything is

in her direction. She's guiding me through how she wants me to hold the gun for this angle. And I draw the gun out, and I find a mark. I draw the gun out. I go to cut. And what's really urgent is the gun wasn't meant to be fired in that angle. So if you're shooting direction, into the camera lens. You're not aiming. I'm not shooting into the camera lens. I'm shooting just off. Just off.

Right. In her direction. I'm holding the gun where she told me to hold it, which ended up being aimed right below her armpit. That was what I was told. I don't know. This was a completely incidental shot, an angle that may not have ended up in the film at all.

But we kept doing this news, so then I said to her, now in this scene, I'm going to cock the gun. I said, do you want to see that? And she said, yes. So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I'm not going to pull the trick. I said, do you see that? She was, well, just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like that.

And I caught the gun, I go, can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that? And she says, and then I let go with the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off. I let go with the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off. At the moment, the decision. That was the moment the gun went off, yeah. That was the moment the gun went off.

It wasn't in the script for the trigger to be pulled. Well, the trigger wasn't pulled. So you never pulled the trigger. No, no, no, no. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them. Never. That was the training that I had. You don't point a gun at me and pull the trigger.

So in other words, what Alec Baldwin was saying was that he pulled the hammer back and the gun just, it was a gun malfunction. It discharged on its own. So his argument is that he never pulled the trigger and, you know, the gun discharged on its own. The problem with that explanation is that the FBI, after there's an FBI analyst that ran some tests on the gun, his name is Bruce Eagler. I'm sure Bruce will show up again for this trial. So you're probably going to see a similar cast of characters for the Alec Baldwin trial, as you did for the Hannah Gutier's Reed trial. But Bruce Siegler did an analysis in the lab, and he discovered that unless the trigger was pulled on that specific gun, it would not fire.

He even went so far as to damage the gun or, you know, I guess he performed some tests where he, I don't know exactly what he did. I'm sure he'll tell us at trial, but that was the only other way he could get this gun to discharge was if he threw it. it or hammered it or something. And so now I think the question shifts from where did the live round come from. Unfortunately, it shifts to who pulled the trigger because Alec Baldwin raised that issue in his interview with George Stephanopoulos.

And we're still talking about involuntary manslaughter, which means that the killing. So involuntary manslaughter essentially is that it's unlawful. You have a killing. It's unlawful. It's against the law, obviously, to kill another human being. There's no malice and there's no intent. the issue here is whether there's criminal negligence. So we'll talk about that in a little bit.

Not only did he pull the trigger, but was he negligent in terms of not checking the gun? Was he negligent in terms of the way he ran the movie set? Because technically, so it becomes more of a legal question. Because technically, you know, if I think of a horrible tragedy like a child, let's say a child's darts out, let's say a two-year-old darts out in the middle of the road and a car is coming around the corner. Let's say a car's coming down the hill and there's a tree and the car doesn't see the child and the car hits the child. That's not involuntary manslaughter because there's nothing that car could have done unless they saw the child. There's nothing the car, the driver could have

done to prevent that. That's what we call an accident. Accidents aren't against the accidents aren't typically going to end up in the judicial system. So I think initially the state of New Mexico may have perceived this to be more of an accident. But then once this issue of the trigger came up and who did he pull the trigger, right? Then it became more of an issue of was this negligence? And that makes it more of a, that makes it a legal issue. So I think that the main thing, the main issue that's going to be litigated here in this trial is who pulled the trigger. Because by all accounts, it doesn't seem reasonable to say that Alec Baldwin knew there was a live round in that gun. There's no.

no evidence whatsoever that he knew there was a live round in that gun. The only question is, should he have checked the gun before firing it? If he didn't, potentially that's negligence. And did he pull the trigger? So even if he pulled the trigger and he didn't know, in theory, that could be negligence because he didn't check the gun, because the movie set was chaotic because there were previous gun discharges. There were all kinds of crazy things going on the set. So really, I think those are the big issues. I think some of the legal experts are saying this may be a trial of experts. This may be a trial primarily of gun experts. Some people for the prosecution, I presume, are going to get like Bruce Ziegler for the FBI is going to get up

on the stand and say that he tested this particular prop gun and there's no way it could have discharged unless he pulled the trigger. And then you're going to have people on the defense, experts on the defense getting up and saying they looked at the same gun or they looked at other guns, similar guns, and they learned that you could pull the hammer back and discharge it without pulling the trigger. I wouldn't be surprised to see some video evidence of that. I'm not sure, but it's probably going to be probably going to be a lot of experts duking it out.

And then I think, I think you know, you may see Alec Baldwin take the stand because he's the one making this argument. And the jury, the defense is probably going to have to put him up there for him to say, hey, look, I did not fire this gun. Now, all of that is legal. So I'm not a lawyer and we just talked about the legal. of this case. That's not really in my wheelhouse. But I mean, I understand those issues because I deal with the legal system all the time. But I'm more interested, obviously, in the psychological

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effecty dot com eFFCTY dot com and use code hidden true crime to get $50 off your first month of gLP1 weight loss treatment no hassles no memberships and no hidden fees get started today so what here's the question i'm interested in if if this is a trial about pulling the trigger. And it seems likely or possible, again, experts will dupe this out on the stand in the courtroom under oath. But if it seems likely that the trigger had to be pulled, that the only way to discharge this gun was to pull the trigger, then why would Alec Baldwin say to George Stephanophilus, to an international audience, why would he say publicly that he didn't pull the trigger? From a psychological standpoint, that's the question. That's the

question I want to know, right? So I'm going to actually read what Alec Baldwin said. This is the exact quote to George Stephanopoulos in 2021. He said, quote, I didn't pull the trigger. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them, never. So if you, I think this, this quote really tells us a lot. If you look at this quote closely, he's really giving us a glimpse into what's going on here. He says, not only did he not pull the trigger, but he said, I would never, I would never point a gun at someone at anyone and pull the trigger at them never. So what Alec Baldwin is telling us is essentially he's not the kind of person that would ever harm another human being, let alone kill them, right?

He's not that kind of person. And there is, there's actually a psychological theory, which I've talked about in some of our previous shows that's called self-verification theory. And this theory was developed by a psychologist, by a research psychologist by the name of William Swan. Swan is SWANN. I have an article with me. It's called self-verification, the search for coherence. This is chapter 19. It's a chapter in a volume. The volume is called the Handbook of Self and Identity. It's the second edition from 2012. I'm just going to read a little bit about self-verification theory, so we get a better understanding of what's going on here. People pursue feelings of psychological coherence through self-verification striving. So the basis of self-verification theory is that people seek to have a coherent sense of themselves. In other words, they seek coherent self-views.

Swan goes on, these feelings of coherence are so alluring that people will fight to maintain the self-fews that produce them, even if it means enduring pain and discomfort. On page 406, Swan continues. People's self-views represent the lens through which they perceive reality, lending meaning to all experience, Should people self-use flounder, they were no longer have a secure basis for understanding and responding to the world because they will have been stripped of their fundamental means of knowing the world. So what's important about this is, I think that nails it, that Alec Baldwin, whether because his memory, he's reconstructing in his memory of this event or whether because it's not consistent with how he sees himself. So in other words, there's an element of cognitive dissonance here. We talk about that a lot.

Cognitive dissonance is when you have two beliefs that conflict with each other based on certain evidence. And so oftentimes people seek to develop coherent stories and narratives of their lives to make sense of their behaviors and their experiences. And sometimes when we're encountered with an event or behavior that doesn't fit our story, it creates this dissonance. So you get these conflicting self-views. And I think that's what's going on here. You have a situation where Alec Baldwin is accidentally, inadvertently, killing another human being and someone he respects, by the way, and he feels very close to. And he's unable to process that.

He's unable to make sense of it and he's unable to live with it. So I think he has to, because of that, I think he has to distort this event a little bit and say he's not pulling the trigger in order for that to be consistent with how he sees himself. Wow. Yeah, that makes sense. So it has to be consistent with, he has to see himself as the kind of person that wouldn't harm, let alone kill another human being. And so I think that's what's going on. And there's, in support of that, in the same interview with George Stephanopoulos from 2021, he says, quote, the idea that someone put a live round in the gun was not even in reality.

In other words, he's saying, like what he's saying here is multiple times during this interview is that this doesn't. fit his reality. Because it doesn't fit his reality, he's going to distort it so that it does. The reality that fits his view of himself is his self-view, the term in self-verification theory that Swan often uses self-view. The self-view that fits Alec Baldwin in this particular case is that he didn't pull the trigger. Right. Now, because in that way, the gun is at fault and not himself, right? So if he's not pulling the trigger, then he can say that Hannah, Gutier's Reed, put the round in and the gun malfunction that he bypasses the entire process so he's not responsible. I think to a large degree that's what we're seeing here. You've got some cognitive dissonance.

Alec Baldwin can't process what happened. If you go look at this interview, I think he's very emotional. I think this interview is evidence of that. You know, I've done thousands of interviews in the last 20 years at ABC. This was the most intense I've ever experienced. Well, it's so raw. I mean, as you can imagine he's devastated, but he was also very candid, he was very forthcoming, he'd answered every question. Is this the worst thing that's ever happened? Yes, yeah, because I think back and I think of what could I have done? He's still trying to process it. In the interview with George Stephanophilus, he talks about a lot of symptoms of PTSD. He talks about his inability to sleep, he talks about having nightmares, he talks about his persistent

anxiety. He talks about the fact that he's thinking about leaving the movie business, that he may never make another movie again. Interestingly enough, he said that prior to the scene in the church, which is where the shooting occurred, where the fatality occurred, was scene 118. And as Alec Baldwin was sitting in the church pew waiting for them to come in for rehearsals prior to the shooting. He said he was sitting there and he was thinking to himself. He said, quote, this movie has made me love making movies again. So he has a large family, has six children, most of them are younger. And he says during the interview that he didn't want to go to New Mexico because he'd be away from his family for a month or so, that his main

priority in life is to be around his kids, to be around his family, to be present for them, to help raise them. That's his main priority. So he cut back a great deal on his movie, his movie commitments in order to be around family. But this was an exception. So he went to New Mexico. He made this movie. He was a little distraught that he wasn't around his family. He sat in that pew minutes before he fired off the live round and he said, I love making movies. This is why I do this. And then he did that. And according to him, he's displaying all these symptoms of PTSD, including this questioning, this deep questioning of whether he'll ever make another movie again. He said for sure he'll never make a movie involving guns. The larger question for him,

now I don't know where he stands now. This was back in 2021. But at that time, he wasn't sure that he would ever make another movie. So these are the types of things, by the way, as someone, myself, as someone who's worked a lot with combat veterans, these are the types of symptoms and questioning of life, this deep existential questioning of identity and what to do next. All of that is part of PTSD. And so you see that here. And that, by the way, so that, this idea is consistent.

I'm not, by the way, I'm not diagnosing with PTSD. I'm just saying that he has, he seems to have a lot of symptoms similar to PTSD after of this shooting. Also, he's very clear about the fact that there are two victims in the shooting, and he's not one of them. And the two victims, the other person that was shot was the director. He survived, Joel and Helena Hutches. And he's quite remorseful. Throughout the interview, he's extremely apologetic. He's very remorseful. He met with the family. He met with Matthew, the husband. He met with the son. The son at the time was 10. The son is now nine or 10. The son is now 12. So that would be the reason I'm bringing this up is because all of this is consistent with self-verification theory.

That there's this tremendous dissonance between how Alec Baldwin sees himself and how he lives his life as a compassionate human being in his mind and this shooting. And I think the idea of him killing another human being is so inconsistent with how he sees himself that he's experiencing these traumatic symptoms. He's saying that he didn't pull the trigger, right? From a psychological standpoint, he's doing everything in his power to bring his psyche back to homeostasis. In other words, to bring it back into balance. So I think this is a trauma for him. He's really thrown by this. And he's really trying to make sense of it.

And he's doing everything in his power to kind of bring things back to normality and to really feel normal again. And so I think that's a big part of what we're seeing with him. Now that the problem with what the obvious problem with his statement and that belief, whether it's true or not, is that he has legal exposure because of it, right? So now by saying that he didn't pull the trigger, which I think was largely a function of this cognitive dissonance that he's trying to resolve, now he's set himself up for the possibility of this felony conviction for involuntary manslaughter. That's one of the unfortunate elements of the situation. is that I think if he, and you know what, I'm willing to say, let's let's let the expert speak. I'm willing to say maybe he didn't. You know, that there was David Halls, who was involved in the making of this movie, was in the room.

When he's the one who handed the gun to Alec Baldwin, he was in the room, he saw this incident. And David Hall's claims, I don't know if he'll claim this on the stand, but David Halls has stated that he did not see Alec Baldwin pull the trigger. So you have a witness who says the same thing, right? So it's not clear cut. I mean, so there is a possibility here. I mean, I think the evidence seems to indicate if you go with the Ziegler, Bruce Ziegler, the FBI analyst, the evidence seems to indicate that the trigger was had to be, you know, pulled to discharge the gun.

But there's some evidence that there's an eyewitness account saying that he didn't pull the trigger. So I don't know. It's not entirely clear cut. No, it certainly isn't. I think as human beings, another interesting aspect of this trial is we really want to be able to have purity. We want someone to blame. We want there to be a very clear blame because of the loss of this innocent life. I think for this trial, for me personally, the reason I'm so intrigued by this trial and one of the reasons I'm going and we're going to live stream it is I think that's like a psychological aspect.

aspect to this trial that I'm interested in is how much we want there to be somebody to blame. And it's just not so clear cut when it comes to this. One thing's for certain, Helena should still be alive. And it's such a tragedy. But there are so many different opinions as to who we should be blaming and who should be punished and facing the consequences. And that gets to, right, that gets to the deepest issue in this case, which is, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. Is this an accident or is it not? Right.

And that, I think more than anything, I think human beings really struggle with this idea of accidents. Human beings struggle with this idea that things can be just random or chance. And so, yeah, I agree with you. I think at the heart of this case is really this question of, was this an accident or was this something? or was this something that he caused, that he should be responsible or accountable for, even if it's involuntary manslaughter, I think human beings have this intrinsic need

to make sense of things. And that's what our channel does, by the way. That's what our show is about is trying to make sense of things. So ever since human beings started putting up cave art, you know, 10 to 20,000 years ago, started drawing paintings and caves, we have had this deep-seated ingrained need to make sense of the world,

to make meaning, right? We're meaning making, pattern-seeking creatures. I could take this a long way, by the way. So in terms of this need for seeing patterns, you know, it's everywhere, right? Our gems know that I may not always be right, but I'm going to assess something in depth and I'm going to tell, I'm going to give my opinion based on the evidence, whether it's popular or not.

So that doesn't mean I'm right, but that doesn't mean I'm always right, but oftentimes I'm not. But my analysis is going to be based on evidence. It's going to be based on my understanding of a lot of psychological research. It's going to be based on history, philosophy, religion, literature. It's going to be based on a lot of elements. And I don't think it's controversial to say that human beings are meaning-making creatures that we see patterns. Here's a perfect example.

I can give you all kinds of examples of patterns that don't exist. We look at the stars and we see constellations. Those are arbitrary. Anybody who's ever read tea leaves, that goes back in hundreds of years. That's seen patterns that don't exist. Tarot cards, conspiracy theories are all based on patterns. Often most of those patterns are not evident. We're meaning-making creatures.

Well, and we're also on that issue, too. Part of self-verification theory is we're also habitual. We're creatures of habit. That self-verification theory also would suggest that it explains why we, we take the same route to work every day, why we have certain habitual patterns that we engage in every day, we get to work, we get some coffee, we go to our desk, right?

We have certain habits that we perform day in and day out because it gives us a sense of coherence. It creates a sense of continuity in our lives. And it creates the illusion that time is not changing. It creates the illusion that we can avoid changing. Because if we do the same things over and over, then nothing's changed, right?

We don't have to deal with change. We don't have to deal with loss. We don't have to deal with the fact that time is going, time is eroding every day. And I think that's one of the reasons self-verification explains that because it says we want coherence above all else. We don't want to change. In fact, Swan has gone so far as to say that in many cases,

even small changes in our life are like death. They feel like death. They create this kind of death anxiety because we don't want to change. We want to see ourselves as enduring permanent fixtures. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's normal. We all want our lives to have some meaning. And that's great.

I think that's just part of who we are. I think you have many other things to talk about. so if this is too off, just say you'll come back to it. But I do find it interesting what Marianco has just said. It's insane and totally irrational to be so resistant to change, which is the basis of life. Everything changes. And I do have questions about that when it comes to human beings.

And you would think evolution and everything changes. Yet human beings are so resistant to change. You would think evolution would help us along there and allow us. to actually not be resistant to change. Any idea why we are so resistant to that as human beings? So some of it can be a personality variable. Some of it can be upbringing too, but typically in homes that are a little more rigid

and based, they rely more on habit and ritual. Typically you'll see similar behaviors and adults raised in those homes. There's also something called the five-factor model. of personality and one of those variables is openness to experience. So some people are more open to change. They're more open to new information. They're more open to experience. And some people aren't. So if you're extremely closed or if you're if you're not open to experience and you're

extremely close minded, then you're going to resist change more than someone that's open. I think most people, most of the time, are resistant to change. But there are there are some variances, there are some differences based on personality variables and upbringing as well. So there's not one answer to that. There's some other interesting questions here in terms of Alec Baldwin's history, right? He has a little bit of a criminal history. It's not severe, but he has this history of attacking paparazzi's. I'm glad you're bringing this up. I actually put up a short as well about something Alec Baldwin did in the past of a voicemembered. A voice, for his daughter. As you mentioned, there's some things about paparazzi. Talk to us a little bit more about

Alec Baldwin's history. If you look at the history of this case, and I mentioned that the initial charges were dismissed and then they were reinstated, I think there was some, a little bit of uproar about giving preferential treatment to a celebrity, and especially given his history of, you know, he's got this history of aggression towards paparazzi. I think given his past and given the fact that, you know, obviously he's a well-known celebrity, you know, probably I don't know where he would rank in terms of an actor, but he's got to be one of the better-known actors out there, I would imagine. So, and he's been around for years.

So I think people were upset that they perceived that he was getting special treatment and, you know, because of his past, you'd have to say that he's not always the most sympathetic character. So it's, and it's not just one incident. It's, it's a series of incidents. So I think that's a problem. You know, there's this, there's this pattern of kind of, I don't know, impulsive, aggressive behavior that he just can't quite seem to stop. So let's look at a little bit of that. In 1995, there was an incident with a photographer, presumably a paparazzi photographer.

he sprayed shaving cream on the guy's car and he supposedly broke his nose. That was never proven, by the way. So there was never a criminal trial for that incident. It was settled. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers,

spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. Ora actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. ORA gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service.

Start your free trial today at ORA.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at ORA.com slash remove. Probably I believe in 2001 there was the infamous custody battle with Kim Bassenger. That was around the same time that he left that voicemail that many people heard. It was all over. For his daughter. Yeah. For his daughter, right, during the custody battle.

But, I mean, there was nothing illegal about that. It didn't make him look good, say the least. Didn't make him look good. It was shocking. It was disturbing, but it wasn't illegal. It wasn't a legal issue. So, I mean, in terms of a criminal record, that wouldn't be on it. It certainly wasn't model behavior.

In 2011, he was kicked off a flight, failing to turn off his cell phone. you know, again, there was no charge there. There was nothing that created any problems legally for him. But, I mean, it was embarrassing for him. In 2012, he assaulted a paparazzi photographer. 2013. He pinned a photographer against a car. So he had a couple of years there where he, and by the way, he met Hilaria in 2011, married her in 2012.

So 2012, 2013 seems to have been a difficult time for him. He was engaging in these aggressive behaviors with paparazzi several years in a row. That was also the time, by the way, when Genevieve Saboran was stalking him. So she was an actress who was in a movie in 2002 with Alke Baldwin. And she at some point later, I don't know exactly the year, but she tried to re-engage him and get into her relationship with him again. And at the same time, he was trying to date hilarious. And, you know, so.

As Ocean Dreamer says, Baldwin gets triggered on in Texas. Yeah, yeah, he's definitely, he definitely has a bit of a short fuse. He seems to. I love a big pot. The, uh, the podcast. The operati really rub him the wrong way. He seems to really value his privacy. So, you know, just I wouldn't, I wouldn't try to stake out his apartment or his house with a camera for too long.

You know, that would probably be. But 2018, he punched a man over a parking space. I remember that well. There were criminal charges filed in that case. He pled guilty to harassment. and he was ordered to take anger management classes, which, you know, the anger management classes should have started in 1995, by the way,

but I don't know how it took the system, you know, 25 years to figure out that Alec Baldwin should attend anger management classes, but they did. So presumably with his family and with this history of aggression, especially towards paparazzi's, and with anger management class, you know, maybe he's simmered down a little bit and sometimes age helps too.

But I think it's fair to say that Alec Baldwin is a little impulsive. You know, he's aggressive at times, obviously. He's probably someone who, I'm going to read what the prosecutor, Kerry Morris, he said during the Hannah Gutier's Reed trial. She said, quote, Alec Baldwin acted like a prima donna on the movie set,

bossing people around. Consistent with his history of violence and aggression, I'd have to say that clearly this guy's probably fairly egotistical. He's self-absorbed. He probably has some narcissistic features. I wouldn't, by the way, and again, I hesitate to use the term narcissistic because I don't want people to jump to the diagnosis. The reason I say that is because one of the main features of narcissistic personality disorder is, a lack of empathy. And if anybody watched, for those of you who watched the George Stephanophilus interview, he was extremely empathic. He was extremely apologetic and remorseful.

He was crying for most of the interview. And it was genuine. So this is not someone who lacks empathy. This is not someone who killed another human being and didn't struggle with the consequences of the repercussions. He struggled a lot to the point where he wasn't sleeping. So I think, but unfortunately, this violent history doesn't help his case. No, it doesn't. It doesn't make him a sympathetic character. And it could potentially, if you're looking for patterns, right, it could potentially create the perception that this underlying aggression could translate into pulling this trigger.

I think there's nobody I know that's saying that. But, I mean, again, if you're looking to, if you really hate Alec Baldwin, and you're looking to try to connect some dots, dots that don't exist, that's a place you might end up. It's not consistent with any evidence, by the way, but again, you know, and there's a political element here. There's a lot of people that don't like Alec Baldwin's politics or political views, and I'm sure they would be, I'm sure that was part of reinstating the charges here, that some people didn't perceive this as fair. You have a guy with some history of aggression, and, you know, he's a big star, and you're just going to drop the charges. I mean, somebody did die.

Somebody was killed. And a very special somebody, you know, I mean, all fatalities are bad. All of these situations are horrendous. But I think this was particularly egregious because so many people loved Helena and she was so talented and creative. And there were a lot of people

that were very distraught over this. Yeah. Someone mentioned that they're surprised we're covering this because we want it to be the next step. I'll tell you one thing. Our biggest concern about covering this trial was that. We don't want it to be that. We do not want it.

This is way too serious for that. And I think we've explained some of the reasons why this is intrigued both John and me during this episode. And it's, does the celebrity status interest? It's certainly intriguing, but I think it's all of the many questions surrounding this and the psychological aspects that we're discussing tonight. And we certainly, again, as John points out, at the end of all, a beautiful person lost their life who should be here today. I think the thing that intrigues me the most is this question of whether human beings are capable of accepting something as simply an accident.

And I think the reason why this case is particularly interested in that regard is because you have a guy with a somewhat controversial history of aggression who happens to be a celebrity and a big name. And he's arguing that this is an accident. But many other people are not. Many other people see this as something that was more intentional. So, I mean, even the state of New Mexico is saying this isn't intentional in the sense that it's involuntary manslaughter. But still, it's serious.

It's a felony and it's something that could result in him going to prison for a year and a half or more. Right. And that affects not just him, but his children and his family and many people referring to the reality show that he has planned. I mean, clearly we'll see. It's interesting for those for those reasons. and I'm particularly interested to see what a jury of his peers will say, right? Like, what are they going to perceive to be the main issues? Are they going to see that if they believe he pulled the trigger,

does that mean he should be held accountable? Is it possible that even if he pulled the trigger, this was an accident, right? It's another look at how human beings interpret the world. I think that's what's especially interesting to me, you know, how, especially when you pull in someone who's, you know, an actor who's famous, right? How does that influence people's perceptions? Is a jury more likely to acquit or less likely to acquit? Right?

Is a jury capable of seeing this as an accident? Do we have to assign blame no matter what? Especially if it's a celebrity with a history of aggression, right? I don't know. These are the questions I'm all interested. These are the questions I'm interested in answering. Yeah. And what does justice look like when it comes to, again, Helena and her life and legacy and our loss, that loss.

Yeah, I mean, there's other issues in here, which is, you know, one of the issues is that he, although he was very apologetic to Helena's husband and son, he never reached out to Helena's family. They're Ukrainian. They were in the Ukraine. I don't know where they are now, but they were in Ukraine at the time of this incident. And apparently he did not make contact with them. He did not apologize to the parents or the sister, Helena's parents or sister. So that was a little bit controversial. I don't know. You know, there's a lot of, It's a lot of interesting components of this situation. How important do you think it is? I mean, we kind of covered it, but what do you think some of the evidence is going to be? Do you think they're going to focus on whether or not he pulled the trigger? Like what makes this involuntary manslaughter? Is it the whether or not he pulled the trigger? Is it the dysfunction on the set?

Is it the fact that he was producer? Is it the fact that he should have checked the gun? Is it the fact that he shouldn't have pointed the gun? I think they're probably going to try to bring up a lot of those issues. What distinguishes this from an accident is the negligence? And there are, there, there's a lot of areas here that appear negligent on his behalf. You know, when I talked about the Hannah Gutier's Reed case, my analysis essentially said that she was someone who lacked the experience and maybe the skills, maybe not the skills so much as the experience, but she lacked the life experience to really step into a leadership role on a movie set. And part of that leadership role for Hannah would have entailed standing up to Alec Baldwin and saying these are some things on this set we're doing wrong, right?

you have this person who's hired with a major, you know, a famous actor to control the props and the guns on the movie set. And part of that job is being able to say no to Alec Baldwin. And she really struggled with that. So I don't think with Hannah, I don't think it was as much about skill as it was about her lack of life experience to really step into that role in the way that would have made sense. And also, of course, that, you know, Hannah and I was doing drugs on the movie set, like she. Allegedly. Yeah. Allegedly doing it.

But my point is, like, she didn't have, I don't think she had a sound grasp of all the elements of that job. She didn't have a sound enough grasp to eliminate live rounds from the set. The job of any person in that role should be, as Alec Baldwin points out, there should not ever be a live round anywhere near a movie set. And there were seven live rounds on that set. That's seven opportunities for people to be killed. But getting to that issue, I think, There's a leadership issue here. I think that Alec Baldwin is in charge.

You know, he's producing the movie. He's the main actor. He's not directing it. But he certainly has most of the influence over this movie set. And the set, by all accounts, was very chaotic. It was it was sloppy that that was the term those often used. The production was being rushed. That it would have been his job to slow it down.

It would have been his job to make sure that all safety precautions were being, you know, measures and precautions were being taken. And, you know, I think some of those things were slipping through the cracks. There were accidental gun discharges going on. According to some of the people on the movie set, Karen Khan was one of them. She said that no one stood up to Baldwin, even though they knew there were problems, that people on the set, like Hannah Gutier's Reed, they had a hard time telling him no. There were a lot of times apparently where Alec Baldwin was going off script. He was waving his gun around like it was a pointing stick.

You know, that's, you don't do that on a movie set. So he was, he himself was being particularly sloppy. He wasn't really engaging or exerting that leadership capability that he should have been. Like, that was his role? So, but was that negligent? Can you translate that type of negligence into pulling the trigger with a live round on it? That's the question. You know, there were other things.

He didn't participate in gun trading or actually, he, he showed up with Hannah for gun trading, but he was on his phone. He wasn't paying attention. He's made conflicting statements. Some of his statements to police initially after were different. For example, he told police initially that Hannah Gutierrez-Reed gave him, you know, provided, handed him the gun, and then he later said it was Dave Halls. So he's made contradictory statements.

His credibility could be an issue for that reason. When you say that you didn't pull the trigger that you just, you know, you pulled back the hammer and it discharged on its own, you might lose credibility over that. So he's got these issues around credibility. He's got these issues around mismanaging this movie set to some degree. I'm sure Alec Baldwin would probably tell you, would tell you that this is true of a lot of low-budget films. He said in the interview with Stephanophilus,

he said that their budget was $5 million. That's, you know, these days in Hollywood, that's exceptionally low. It's a low budget. So I'm sure he felt a lot of pressure to get this movie made. quickly under those time constraints and with that type of a budget, I think Alec Baldwin would probably tell you this type of behavior is, I don't know, maybe expected. I don't know if I'd say normal, but that maybe under these extreme conditions. And ultimately, his argument, which I

agree with completely, his argument is if you don't put a live round, if you don't put a live round in circulation among all the ammunition on that movie set, nobody gets killed. It's that simple. It really is that simple. If you remove any live live. round from that set, even in spite of all the negligence and the fact that he's not exerting his leadership capacity as much as he should, that things are chaotic, that he's going off script. If you take all of that and you eliminate those live rounds, you don't have a fatality. So I think the tricky part here for me is Hannah Gutier's Reed was convicted essentially of bringing those live rounds onto the set. It seems to me that was her role. That was her

job was to eliminate those. And she was convicted for that. Alec Baldwin really doesn't have anything to do with that. You know, to me, even if he pulled the trigger and he's negligent, I don't know. I don't really have an answer in terms of whether he should be held accountable for that. I mean, somebody died, somebody was killed. They shouldn't have been. It should have been prevented. But, you know, that's where I'm glad I'm not on the jury, you know, because I don't know.

I mean, obviously, I need to see all the evidence. I'm engaging in a lot of speculation here because you and I don't know the evidence. So clearly the evidence will matter. and that's one of the reasons you're going. Let's see what they've got. And then let's evaluate that. So this is a quote from Alan Watts, who wrote a book called The Wisdom of Insecurity.

Alan Watts is a famous intellectual, also a Zen Buddhist. And I think this quote kind of speaks to some of the topics we've been covering tonight. This is from his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity. Quote, we suffer from the delusion that the entire universe is held in order by the categories of human thought, fearing that if we do not hold them with the utmost tenacity, everything will vanish into chaos.

The entire universe is held by the categories of human thought, and we fear that if we not hold onto those categories of thought with the utmost tenacity, everything will vanish into chaos. And so I think that's relevant to our discussion. Desperate to find meaning in other words. Right.

We want to impose. our categories of thought. We want to impose our beliefs and our mental maps and the patterns we're seeing. We want to impose all those on the world to make sense of it. And if nothing fits, if there's, if there truly is a random accident and we can't make sense of it, we have a desire. We have this innate desire to make sense of it anyway.

The other thing I wanted to read, this is a quote from the husband, Helena's husband Matthew. He said, this is after he met with Alec Baldwin. He said, quote, all of us believe Helena's death was a terrible accident. So even Matthew, Matthew doesn't want to punish anyone.

He sees this as a terrible accident. And sometimes I wonder if human beings are capable of seeing things as just accidents. I hope so, but I do want to believe that the stars aligned to make me meet you. So I guess there are some patterns that I will keep believing in, that I will find meaning in. and I'll try to also embrace the chaos though

and the things that I don't understand as well Was that because we were reading the right tarot cards? Am I pronouncing that right? I think so. We read the tea leaves correctly. Something like that. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for being here tonight

and mostly thank you to my incredible co-host. We'll be seeing all of us. you next time in Santa Fe. And we will be live streaming the Rust or Alec Baldwin versus New Mexico trial here. I hit into crime. So thanks everyone. And have a wonderful night. We'll see you. Good night. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling. it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers,

spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. Ora actively removes your data from broker's sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. ORA gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at ORA.com slash remove.

Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove.