The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: Guns, Liberty & Responsibility (+ Sen. Cory Booker)

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Welcome to another edition of ‘Roll On’, wherein Rich Roll and journalist & author Adam Skolnick riff on matters of interest across sports, culture, entertainment, and self-betterment.  Given the heartbreaking number of mass and school shootings this year—punctuated by the horrific events in Uvalde—today’s discussion centers on gun violence in America, culminating with a conversation with Senator Cory Booker, who joins via Zoom to help us understand why this problem is so intractable, and what we can do about it. Specific topics discussed in today’s episode include: Kristian Blummenfelt’s stunning Sub7 Project performance; the downfall of legendary UC Berkeley swimming coach Teri McKeever; the release of Robbie Balenger’s movie The Colorado Crush: 63 Days of Endurance; American gun culture, alarming statistics behind mass shootings, and the political barriers that make it difficult to enact stricter gun laws; and Senator Cory Booker’s take on what’s needed to change firearm legislation. Today’s episode is also viewable on YouTube: https://bit.ly/rollon685 Peace + Plants, Rich

This is not a partisan issue. It really is not. And the problem often with our country is we try to reduce things into the binary world as Dem or Republican. I've listened to your show enough to know that you realize that's not the case. And we as Americans have so much more in common. The lines that divide us are nowhere near as strong as the ties that bind us. But this political industrial complex that will try to parse us along these tribes and make us believe that we're different,

that's a problem. We're at a perilous moment for our democracy where you're seeing larger and larger portions view an us versus them within this country and not just us, where we're all one people with one destiny. And the real challenge I see, again, is how do we make other people care? I don't need to change one person's mind who might believe that we shouldn't pass universal background checks or

gun licensing, or I don't have to change one person's mind. All we have to do is get the people who share our beliefs, which is the majority of us, to do a lot more. But we are going to need a lot more committed Americans to, despite your whipped up differences with somebody, that you can still find ways to create connection and see common dignity and see common destiny. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Roll On, where two, I might add, very well-dressed, sartorially conscious podcaster, one, an ocean swimming journalist and author, that would be you, Adam. The other, an ultra endurance athlete turned writer and podcaster, namely me, bring our perspective on culture, on world events,

on art, sports, politics, and try to just make a little more sense of this crazy world that we live in while we're at it. What do you think? I think that's the perfect encapsulation to what we do here, Rich. Concise. It was concise.

I think it's the most well descriptive piece on the roll on yet. Well, we continue to iterate on this format and play around with bringing new things to you guys. So we've got a very exciting show today. First, we're gonna talk about a few interesting headlines from the world of endurance, which has kind of become our habit here.

We're gonna share a few things we've been enjoying respectively, but really the thrust of today's discussion is focused on a more sobering subject to say the least, specifically America's perplexing problem and obsession with guns, why rational gun control continues to elude us and what we can and perhaps should expect

to be done about it. It's a discussion that will be bookended by a call with Senator Cory Booker, which is very exciting. He was kind enough to join us with his thoughts on this heated and important matter. So let's kick it off. I'm gonna begin with my standard opener. How go you Mr. Skolnick?

Rich, did I ever tell you about the time I realized I was dead broke in the middle of Mongolia? You've somehow forgot to share that story with me. I was in a supermarket in Mongolia when I realized I was running low on cash. I had weeks to go and this research trip was early on. And I attempted to, what do they say? Push, was it push?

I guess take a month off paying for my car. Delay my car payment? Yeah, that's a very, I don't know. I was attempting to, I built up a little bit of wiggle room and so I was attempting to basically decline to pay. And in actuality, accidentally paid three times the normal car payment.

How did you happen to mess that up so badly? I don't wanna get into the technical difficulties. No financial wizard you. That's what I take from this story that you're only halfway into. So you spent all your money overpaying for your car and stranded yourself in Mongolia? In the middle of Mongolia.

Luckily- No Ubers. No Ubers there. There was a camel. I called for an Uber and a camel came over. Five stars. But luckily my future wife, April Wong, happened to be with me.

Very forgiving of your financial oversight. She was in much better financial condition than I at the time. So the lonely planeting continued and on we went into the Gobi desert. The planet became a little less lonely. Yes, and I thought about that because I was having this weird scent memory.

You know how memory and scent are kind of like connected. And today, April played this morning while I was making breakfast, she played an Indian song that she remembered from her travels. And I swear to God, this ended up getting us into this Mongolia discussion. But while she was playing this song

that I hadn't heard before, I swear I smelled Nag Champa. Has that ever happened to you? You hear something, a memory's triggered and you smell something that's not there. Usually it's the other way around. I smell something and it triggers the extreme vividness of a memory that I didn't even remember that I had. Right, like I was, I swear to God,

I smelled like the incense wafting in Varanasi, you know, like when I was there and I was like, anyway. Hence the mala beads that you're wearing today. Maybe it's all related. You know, I got into the beads during my deadline that was just like all encompassing when I had that poofy beard. And all of a sudden I started wearing beads.

Is there a story behind where you procured said beads? No, I'm not sure. I have like a whole rack of beads of different kinds. I was deeply into beads at one time. I'm not unless so now. Unless so now. So they're not the provenance of some, you know, holy guru figure.

No, but I used to actually use them cause I'd use them to do meditations, whatever. And so now I don't meditate quite that way where I'm doing mantra meditations. And so I haven't used them in a while, but I used to actually use them. So I'd pick them up wherever, but yeah, there you go. Otherwise the deadline beard is dead.

I know, the beads would have gone well with the beard though. They did better. Well, I wore them last time. Yeah, but did you wear them on top of your shirt? I think they were tucked in. This time they're on top because if I don't wanna get into the whole biological issue of a hairy chest and beads,

but it's not always comfortable. Well, there's something to the idea that you're wearing mala beads and my feet are adorned in vegan Birkenstocks right now. And we're gonna talk about gun control, a couple progressive libtards. Yes. We're gonna pontificate upon this very heightened issue. Two strikes against us right off the bat.

Hopefully you're not watching this. You're just listening to it and you think, those guys make a lot of sense. I had to ditch my flip flops for the Burke's. But what's going on with you, man? How it's happening with- There you go. That was the prompt I was like,

you see, I have to like spoon feed you. Well, I didn't know if we were done talking about me. I always assume we're still talking about me. Well, we can do that. We know the audience a lot. We could just do it. We can do a whole show. Tell me more, Adam.

What other tales from the lonely planet can you share? Should I ever tell you about the time I was in Jordan and I went up to a shawarma stand, I was pre-vegan and I had no idea if I could afford a shawarma. You did not, but you know what? We're gonna put a pin in that and you can tell that story some other time. Back to my vegan Birkenstocks.

Yes. So, and this relates to like my fitness and my back problems that I've shared about. I'm working with a PT right now who basically said, you gotta get rid of the flip-flops. Okay. Very painful counsel, I might add, because essentially I just,

if I'm not wearing Salomon running shoes, I'm wearing flip flops. That's my preferred footwear. And you can forget about Chuck Taylors. If the flip flops are out the window. I own a couple pairs of Chuck Taylors, but yeah. For the back, I was told no bueno and told that the vegan Birkenstocks

would be a better option. So that's why I'm wearing those today. But yeah, so- So wait, so you're saying dad shoes, it took you a long time to get to dad shoes, but you should consider that a victory. I have some dad shoes and I had to, I'll get to it, but I had to kind of do a thing in San Diego the other day

and I had to go buy a pair of dad shoes because I don't have any sort of respectable shoes that I can wear in a more formal setting. But anyway, I'll get to that. But yeah, so as I've shared, like I've had these back problems and it's really got me benched from doing the things that I love,

swimming, biking and running. I've sort of been told like, not now, we gotta work on these other things. And so I've been focused on all of these annoying little physiotherapy exercises that are all about activating my glutes and my hamstrings because they're so weak in comparison to these other muscle groups.

And it's not even strength exercises. It's really just getting these muscles to fire. Cause when I tell my brain, like move my leg in a certain way, like it doesn't move or I use the wrong muscles to move it. So it's been really educational and interesting playing around with that. But you know, I hate it.

It's annoying. I just wanna go, I wanna go run. I know. I wanna go swim. I wanna do these other things, but I'm committed. I'm all in. I'm trying swim, I wanna do these other things, but I'm committed, I'm all in, I'm trying to do these pelvic mobility exercises and this whole like routine.

Straps and things? I'm not even at the straps yet, I'm at the more elementary phase of this whole thing, which has required kind of a new level of humility and patience because I wanna just burst out the door, but here's where I'm at. I'm accepting of it and committed to this journey and we'll see where it heads,

but haven't had any huge back flare ups. It's not like my back pain has gone away, but hopefully I'm on a good trajectory with all of this. That's great. That's good. And you look fantastic. Hey man. And that's what counts.

You got, the hair and makeup person just left. You can thank them. Okay. But it's been a cool week. My eldest daughter, Mathis graduated from high school. That was exciting. Can't believe that she already graduated from high school. It's just crazy.

Do I congratulate you? A newborn, no, don't graduate me, graduate or congratulate Mathis. I know, but do people congratulate the parent in that regard? If they do, it's a little weird. Especially because it's high school. It's like, you should be able to graduate high school.

I think so. I think so. It's worthy of celebration though. Yes, yes. And then I had to jet from that to go down to San Diego where I attended this conference called Life Itself, which is this event that Sanjay Gupta, personal friend, friend of the podcast,

created in partnership with this other guy called Mark Hodosh, who was the owner and co-founder of TedMed. And they created this new conference called Life Itself. Sanjay had just sort of invited me to attend. I didn't know you guys were buddies. Super buddies. Yeah, we met like I think back in like 2013

when you did a story on me and we've just stayed in touch. And I just went with no expectations. I didn't really spend a lot of time researching what it was all about. I just thought it would be cool and nice to support Sanjay. And he was kind enough to invite me to attend. And then a couple of days before the event, he texted me and he's like,

"'Hey, I think it would be really cool "'if you did like a fireside chat with Lance Armstrong. "'What do you think about that?' So it went from being like, "'Oh, I'm just gonna chill out' to,, oh, now I have to like do a thing. And of course I'm gonna say yes to that. But then it was like, okay, what do I ask Lance? How is this gonna go?

It's just a 20 minute thing, but it ended up being great, really fun. The speakers at this conference were off the chain, like next level thinkers, geniuses at the cutting edge of health and biotech and longevity. I saw more than a few people who I just love to get on the podcast and also presentations by people

who have been on the podcast, like David Sinclair and Arianna Huffington, Dean Ornish, Sanjay, of course. And what's cool is the presentations are slowly being dripped out on cnn.com. The one I did with Lance, I'll let you guys judge how that went, should be up there soon, it's not up there yet.

But if you go to cnn.com slash life itself, you can see some of the presentations, again, with more being dripped out. So it was really fun. It was incredibly inspiring, uplifting event. I go to a lot of conferences and this was like a cut above basically anything else I've ever attended. How forthcoming was Lance?

Were you getting into the nitty gritty or had you done that kind of, you hadn't done any- We did a podcast several years ago. And I guess I would just say, watch the video. You guys make up your own mind. I'll leave it there. Sounds like you were hard hitting. No, what are you gonna do in 20 minutes?

They're like 20 minutes. I'm like, that's one question. So did you do it? I can do two to three hours. 20 minutes is much more stressful. Right, that's much harder. Like how do you even get your head around that? Like it's not in my skillset or toolbox.

I actually think it is, you know, like I always thought after our first interview and then like kind of listening to your show, I always thought like you're one of the best interviewers there is. So you could do any format. I always thought like your destiny was like NBC was gonna come calling or 60 minutes was gonna come calling.

That's what I always thought. Maybe this could be the beginning of it. Very kind of you to say. I always thought that. Very kind of you to say. I always thought that. Very kind of you to say. Yeah. We'll see. I like doing what I'm doing now.

I know. I'm not doing this so that I can get another thing. I know, I'm not implying that that was your idea. I'm just saying I could see it. I will say it went well. People seem to really enjoy it. So you guys can decide. And when it goes up, I'll share it out on social media.

Beautiful. Yeah. Final thing before we get into the next little segment is I just wanna thank everybody who joined the giveaway for the 50 copies of Finding Ultra that we're handing out to kind of celebrate the 10th anniversary. We got a big response out of that. That opportunity closes on June 9th, which is the day this podcast is going up.

We're recording this on, what is it? The 6th today, which is Monday. But in any case, we're gonna announce the winner soon and just appreciate everybody who kind of signed up for the mailing list. And we also got a lot of cool ideas about how to leverage that mailing list to create something that people would actually enjoy

seeing in their inbox, as opposed to feeling irritated and quickly unsubscribing. Oh, right. Or you can be like me and just never unsubscribe and just watch these emails coming in and start taking up residence in your inbox. I subscribe to some sub stacks and some newsletters. And I would say that more often than not,

like I just don't have time to even read them. And no matter how many times I unsubscribe from mailing lists that I never signed up for, every day I would say like 60 to 70% of the incoming emails are just from lists that I never signed up for. And I'm just constantly deleting emails. Is that your inbox experience? My inbox experience is I never delete them.

And then I have like 30,000 emails. And then Gmail says you have 90, you have 1% left. And then I go on a mad, like slash and burn. Deletion, yeah. Clear cutting. I delete them as I go. Well, I delete them as I go. Well, I delete them as I go. And then when I'm busy, I just leave unread the ones that I need to go back to.

And then it's a crap shoot as to whether I ever go back to them. I'm gonna start deleting as I go. It causes irritation with people that, you know, I'm trying to do stuff with. Really? Have you ever had, I've had that once where I was just sick of getting this one newsletter

unsubscribed. And then I thought like at the time, this was way back, at the time I thought that there's some bot, like that person's never gonna see me do that. They look at their unsubscribed so they know that you. And then I found out. I got like unfollowed. Like blocking somebody on social media.

They took it personally. They did and they dropped me like a bad habit. Hey, you invited that drop. I did, I did. I wasn't upset. All right, well, let's start with the light before we go into the dark. We need to report back on the Sub-7 hour Ironman project.

I think it's fair to say that this podcast is now officially a Christian Blumenfeld Stan account, particularly in light of his accomplishment this past weekend. It seems like we're checking in on Christian every single week here because he's constantly breaking records and eclipsing ceilings on what he's capable of.

So yeah, I mean, every time he races, it seems like he's doing something special. So, right. So our favorite Norseman did it again, just to recap in the last 12 months, this guy was not only crowned Olympic champion, he claimed the WTC series championship. He set the fastest recorded Ironman ever in Cozumel.

I guess that's not a world record though. There were some, something about that. It wasn't, it's not considered a world record because of the down current swim in Cozumel like something about the bike distance. But then when he won in St. George, it was the fastest time ever at a world championship, but it was not the same course as in previous years.

So he was most recently crowned world champion in St. George. And now he's become the first ever athlete to go under seven hours in an iron distance triathlon as part of this sub seven project, which much like the sub two marathon project where Kipchoge was trying to go under two hours in the marathon.

This allowed for drafting. They created a course that was very conducive to going fast. And not only did Christian go under seven hours, he absolutely demolished it. He went six hours and 44 minutes, which included a 2.25 marathon, which is unbelievable. There's some graphics that I found on social media that I wanted to share.

And he was supposed to go up. He was supposed to go, this was actually a race. He was supposed to go up against Alistair Brownlee, but he got ruled out. He had a stress response to his hip. And so they brought in Joe Skipper who happened to be the guy that had been trash talking. Yeah, he's the smack talker,

which makes for better television. It was great. And he fucking threw down. He was not messing around. No. He was not messing around. He was ahead as you know, off the bike. Right, yeah.

So Christian got out of the swim at 45, Joe was 49. And then Joe just threw down an unbelievable bike leg going three hours and 20 minutes. 316. Is it 360? Yeah, those were the projections. Oh yeah, sorry, I was looking at the projections. Yeah, so yeah, Christian swam 48, Joe swam 53,

and then Joe threw down a 316 on the bike. That's riding 112 miles in three hours and 16 minutes. That's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. That's crazy. How is that even possible? Like eight minutes faster than Christian, but Christian, he knows how to stay within himself

and not race anybody other than himself, stick to his plan and- So is that a 30 mile an hour or greater than 30 mile an hour average speed? I can't do math, it's fast. Jeez. Yeah, it's unbelievable. But then Christian, so Christian threw down,

oh, I'm sorry, I misspoke about his marathon. I said he ran 225, but he ran 230. And Joe ran 236. I mean, these are crazy fast. So Christian went 6.44 and Joe went 6.47. Unbelievable. And then on the women's side, they called that the sub eight project.

Nicola Spring and Kat Matthews both readily eclipsed the eight hour mark. Nicola went 7.34 and Kat went 731. These times are just so crazy fast. Look at those marathons on those two. I know, 245 and 246 marathons. And apparently, so when Joe went by Christian on the bike, he talked shit.

This is supposedly what happened. I didn't get to see the, I saw a little bit, I read about it, but I didn't get to see or hear the, I guess, whatever that he said. And then on the run, Christian gave him a little something on the way. Did he? When he passed him at like the 17K mark.

I don't know. I couldn't find anybody that had the transcript of what they said. Unbelievable. I know there was a live cast. I didn't catch it. I know you didn't catch it either. But I heard that it was really well done.

And I think that's interesting because in contrast, the WTC that oversees Ironman, they always live cast the Ironman races and they're pretty notorious for being substandard. People are always complaining about them showing the wrong thing or being in the wrong place at the wrong time and all this kind of glitchy and all that kind of stuff.

But apparently with this sub seven, sub eight broadcast, like they crushed it. Yeah. So hopefully, you know, Ironman needs to get its shit together when it comes to these live casts. Yeah, yeah. I mean, no doubt. I mean, it worked and people loved it

and it sounds like everyone was really thrilled to be a part of it. And it seemed like Christian loved being part, even though he is part of Team Norway and they do work together as a team, as a lot of triathletes do, it can be you're out there racing alone. So it seemed like he enjoyed that, like the big team,

they had like obviously world-class marathoners pacing them, they had professional cyclists pacing them. So, you know, it must've been fun to be in a pack and to be able to work that way. Sure, I mean, two observations before we move on. One, obviously the course was fast, but it really just goes to show you how significant drafting is.

Yeah. You know, if you can go that much faster, I mean, basically when you're tucked in on the bike behind a group that's breaking the wind for you, there is an effortlessness to the whole thing that makes a huge difference. So not only does that count towards the incredible bike splits,

but also allows them to be super fresh for the run. Fair. And the second observation being that, let's not forget, we pointed this out in the last roll on, Christian was not prioritizing this. This was just kind of like a one-off thing for fun that they weren't even really focused on. So the fact that he goes,

he went as fast as he did without overthinking it too much is kind of amazing. It's definitely amazing. I mean, I wouldn't say he was fresh as a daisy on the run. He said he had cramps at the 10K mark. And I'm thinking I had cramps last night in the middle of the night as I was sleeping. Oh, Adam.

And I almost cried, but he finished his marathon. Yeah, well, you can call Larry David about it. Good for you, Christian. We look forward to getting you on the podcast after Kona. All right. That's when we're doing it. After Kona? Are we doing it before or after? Are we doing Kona?

I don't know. Probably not. Oh, all right. We'll see. We're, maybe. I said I would look into it and I've done nothing to look into it since we last talked about it. So, I don't know. That's what I've done nothing to look into it since we last talked about it.

So I don't know. All right, well then we're just in the same place we were last time. Let's just check back in on that. More will be revealed. The other thing that caught my eye in terms of, news from the world of sports and endurance is this Terry McKeever story.

So Terry McKeever is a legendary coach in swimming. She's been the head coach of the UC Berkeley women's team for many, many years. I think it's fair to say she's the most prominent, most victorious female coach in swimming history. I mean, she's about my age. She's been around forever. I don't know her personally,

but even like way back in the day, like she was around, like everybody in swimming knows her. She was suspended and has been put on administrative leave in the wake of this scandal where more than 20 current or former athletes of her have come out to report bullying and verbal abuse on her behalf. So this is a kind of, you know, set off a bit of a earthquake in the swimming world.

Right. You know, basically she's, you know, being one of swimming's leading coaches and the architect of one of college sports premier programs. I mean, she's produced Olympians and NCAA champions and all kinds of standouts, both in the pool and in the classroom for decades. She's the first and only woman head coach

of the US Olympic team. She led a squad that included six future current or former Cal swimmers who earned a combined 13 medals at the 2012 games in London. She's won four NCAA team titles. She's produced 26 Olympians who earned a combined 13 medals at the 2012 games in London. She's won four NC2A team titles. She's produced 26 Olympians who have combined for 36 Olympic medals and 29 seasons in Berkeley.

So you can't argue with her track record. And yet this story breaks and not for nothing, it was broke by the Orange County Register, which is kind of an interesting outlet to kind of break a big story. They have a paywall. I know, they have a paywall. But in any event, like what's interesting

is the Orange County Regist, it's like a little local paper, but they consistently break big stories in the swimming world for some reason. So whoever is on the swimming beat here is like on top of their game. Yeah, no doubt. In any event, in this expose,

we learned that at least six Cal women swimmers since 2018 have made plans to kill themselves or obsessed about suicide due to McKeever's bullying. 24 current and former Cal swimmers, eight parents, a former member of the Golden Bears men's team, and two former Cal athletic department employees have told the kind of safety and sport organization that McKeever was a bully who for decades

has allegedly verbally and emotionally abused, swore at and threatened swimmers on an almost daily basis, pressuring them to compete or train while injured or dealing with chronic illnesses or eating disorders. It just goes on and on and on. It's like, it does not paint a very good picture. And- No, sounds like the Bobby Knight of the swim game.

So the broader kind of conversation around this is around this philosophy of coaching, that Bobby Knight school of coaching, that win at all costs kind of philosophy, we're kind of seeing the end of that for good reason. Like there was a period of time, I mean, back when I swam, my coach exhibited a lot of these,

some similar tendencies. Who was your coach? Skip Kenney, Stanford. Like he was pretty hardcore. He got deposed on a similar situation. Well, ultimately his downfall was the result of, he had a personal grudge against one particular swimmer named Jason Plummer,

who recently passed away this past year. I think we talked about it on Roll On. And he hated Jason so much that he doctored the record board like the all time performance list and remove Jason's name from the record boards, even though Jason had had swum times that would have allowed him to be on those lists. Jason called him out on it.

There was a big scandal and ultimately, Skip had to step down. So he was on cooking the books, that's it? He cooked the books, but then there was, there's a lot of other stuff and we don't need to get into it now. But the point being that then there was, there's a lot of other stuff and we don't need to get into it now. But the point being that, you know, he was pretty hardcore and this was the eighties and that was a time

where you could get away with that stuff and maybe even get praised for it. Like it was sort of a mark of pride. Bobby Knight was revered by these basketball journalists. So culturally we've moved forward and thankfully this is no longer acceptable. I had no idea. I mean, I'd heard stories that Terry

was a hard charging coach, but I had no idea the extent to which this was going on. I read one of these stories that you had up there, the more recent one, apparently like, cause the athletic director is saying all the right things now, but apparently was sitting on this information for ages. Well apparently it's been going on forever.

And he's been fielding these same complaints that the OC registered journalists has now documented. This is like prize winning stuff. Cause he's shaking the core of this incredible swim program. But apparently like they were contacted then by someone who was supposed to be like an assistant coach there

that maybe they thought was taking over and the swimmers came to what they thought was a meeting and she was there. And she's like, and basically said, are you guys ready to swim? And they all bailed. And then, you know, like he had to chase them out or she had to, I don't know, Jesse so-and-so,

I don't know if it's a male or a female. But so like, even as this was ongoing, Terry was still there basically trying to hold court. And then finally that's what was the last straw and they made the announcement. So, Berkeley trying to cover their ass, like saying they care about the swimmers. It's like, a person like Terry McKeever,

they were that it's not just journalists that revere her or whoever it's the ADs that revere her. And like, she's produced so much for the school. We can't shake this up. Like look at the track record. Right. And then that's how these people continue generation after, you know, year after year.

I mean, she's been up there for a whole generation. Basically, right? Oh yeah, I mean, I think she's 56 or something like that. And has been in coaching shortly after she graduated college if memory serves me. So there you go. And it's just interesting, this philosophy of being so intense to drive performances.

I mean, her track record demonstrates that on some level, I guess you can make the argument that it was effective, but it's a short-term solution. Like ultimately- That's what she would make the argument. Yeah. But in college, you only need short-term. In Olympics, you only need short-term. You only have the same roster once.

I just never responded to that. No. I just don't think, like now with everything that we know, it's unacceptable. Like you wanna bring out the best in your athletes, like empower them, give them agency, make that coach athlete relationship a collaboration where there's open communication and a sense of empowerment.

But this idea, like you're a piece of shit, like these girls were all reporting, like they were so driven for her approval that it drove them to the edge of like mental health and sanity. Right. So anyway. Well, another one down.

Yeah, I know, right? Like how many coaches are still out there who are behaving badly like this? Probably a lot. I would guess a lot. I know. right? Like how many coaches are still out there who are behaving badly like this? Probably a lot. I would guess a lot. Yeah, I know. I would guess a lot. Anyway, let's move on.

This is also a Robbie Ballinger, Stan account podcast. Robbie Ballinger. And we've all talked at length about his Colorado crush where he went out and spent a whole summer doing all this crazy stuff. He ran up all the 14ers in Colorado. He ran the Leadville and the Colorado Trail and all that kind of stuff.

In any event, they have made a documentary about this that was directed by friend and friend of the podcast, Reese Robinson. Reese used to work with us and take pictures and make videos with us. Okay. And Reese followed Robbie around for the better part of that experience

and they've created something special. It's gonna debut on June 8th on Robbie's new endurance platform on YouTube, which is called, what is it called? The Audacious Report. I think it's Robbie and Reese together are behind that one. Yeah, exactly. Oh, they launched that channel together,

the Audacious Report. It's not just a channel, it's a platform. So they have a website and the website is going to be a place to go to check out films, podcasts, and articles featuring endurance athletes. Oh, that's cool, I didn't know that. Where did you read about that? Robbie told me about it.

Oh, he did, that's very cool. So go to the Audacious Report YouTube channel. You can watch the trailer for the Colorado Crush. It's already up. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see it here. And then June 8th, which actually that's the, so it'll be up by the time this podcast is up, which is cool.

And you'll find it on that YouTube channel. And yeah, the idea is to, is also for athletes to consider that they should support a place to announce big adventures and goals and things like that. Right on. So cool. Congrats guys.

Yeah, awesome. And the film is great, I saw it. Oh, you did? Yeah, I got a sneak peek and it's fabulous. The cinematography is wonderful. It's really intimate. You really feel like you're part of the crew watching Robbie do this stuff.

And then also seeing how spectacular the scenery is and where he's doing it. It's really cool. It's got that big feel, but also the intimate kind of fly on the wall feel as well. So congrats guys. All right, man. Well, I look forward to talking about it.

Before we take a quick break, you wanna talk about our next favorite person? The other person we stand for? Bo Burnham, the funniest man alive today. So good. He is the funniest man alive, right? He's pretty damn funny. I think he's the funniest guy alive today.

Geniusly talented, creative person. He released outtakes from his special that we talked about at length on the podcast, Inside, where he just strings together on YouTube for free, all this stuff that didn't make it into the final cut. And it's an epic watch. It's amazing. I highly suggest everybody check it out.

I think I have 10 minutes to go up and just this has been nibbling on it. It's got outtakes of stuff that you'll recognize. It's got completely new numbers that he never put into the podcast, including, I mean, into the film, including a podcast. Right, that's the one that seems to be resonating on social media and getting shared the most.

So it's pretty transparent who he's poking fun at in that. And I'll just leave it at that. You guys can check it out, but it's pretty incisive. Yeah, and there's more Jeff Bezos trolling, which I'm always here for. I know, there's a couple things in there, but he just can't get off the Bezos obsession. I think like now he would do an Elon.

Like if he was making the next one, don't you think Elon would be someone that he'd go after? I love the fact that he's such a prolific creator and really a product of social media and YouTube. But he's mature enough now to really not participate in the social media ecosystem other than to tweet like once every eight months that he has some new thing out to share with everybody and everyone goes wild.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good for him. I feel like somehow this was more depressing though than the actual film. I still have, I've only watched a couple of clips, so I haven't had time to sit through it and go through the whole thing. Pretty fun.

But Beau, if you're listening, I'm gonna remove Adam from his seat and place you there if you're ever so inclined. Oh. It would be an incredible podcast. Not on the roll. So I can't be here? You can be here.

You just can't sit in that chair. He would sit in that chair. Okay. All right, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back with our main topic. quick break, and then we'll come back with our main topic. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life.

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step towards recovery.com. Should we talk about guns, Adam? I think we have to. We do have to. How do we do this though? It's so difficult to figure out how to approach this subject matter. It's so devastating and unwieldy and uncomfortable. I think we can all agree that what we've borne witness to

just over the last couple of weeks is heartbreaking to say the least. And I've struggled with how to think about this, how to approach it. I do feel compelled. I feel a responsibility to discuss it, even though it's not fun on the podcast. But how do we structure this?

You have a thought? Yeah, I mean, I think if we frame it like this, this is the deal. So we're 23 years since the Columbine massacre, which was shook everybody up. That was in a high school outside of Denver. A decade since Sandy Hook, which I thought at the time would have been the event that spurred action because there's nothing you couldn't imagine a worse thing

than what was it kindergarteners being targeted by a madman with an AR-15. And then we're only 10 days since Buffalo, since that racist massacre in a supermarket where 10 died. And then, we had just talked about the murder in Austin of an athlete. Right, Mo Wilson. Mo Wilson.

We recorded that literally the day before Uvalde. And you had pointed out this issue around guns, which was sort of prophetic. And then I had to kind of append the blog post and the social media posts around that episode to remind people that we had recorded it in advance of Uvalde and that's why it was not discussed. Yeah, but I mean, I guess the real question I think people want to know from you is kind of

how did this land for you? Where were you? How did you, like, what were your feelings when you heard this was going on? And like, what were you doing? Were you paying close attention to it? Were you trying to avoid it? Cause it's so heavy.

Like what were you doing? I mean, in between, you know, I wasn't glued to the 24 hour news cycle, but of course I was, you know, paying attention to what was going on. I mean, it's devastating, you know, as a parent of such a young person, when you become a parent,

it becomes all that more heightened. I mean, it's unbelievable in elementary school, like how could this possibly happen? And when you think about the 23 years since Columbine and the decades since Sandy Hook, and then you consider the fact that in the short period of time between Uvalde and today, there's actually been 23 more mass shootings

in the United States. Like look at this article, like it's unbelievable. I don't know how they're defining mass shootings. I guess that's- I think it's three or more. Three or more. Three or more. So obviously these aren't all school shootings, but it's really devastating. And it's so strange that no matter what happens,

we can't seem to move forward in any kind of meaningful way to address this problem. So I wanna talk about that, of course. I don't know that I can offer anything that hasn't already been said, particularly with respect to like the emotional experience of what we've all collectively experienced. Yeah, I mean, I think it,

because it unfolded, it was like, I mean, I was busy day after day during this whole thing. And at some point I plugged into it right around the time when we started to realize that the police line on this thing was some bullshit and that there were complications to say the least in how they addressed this problem and how there was somebody alive.

That's a whole other thing. Right, but like, yeah. And so then when that was going on is when I kind of plugged into it and it was just, you know, when you have Parkland and Columbine, then you have Sandy Hook and Uvalde, you just- It's hard not to be super angry about the whole thing. You're angry, you're- It's so outrageous.

You're despairing, you're like, in my house, we are friends with a lot of families with young kids, obviously. And the moms are just like, looking for other places to live, you know, like that don't have this problem. Let me give you some statistics I found to show you why people are kind of leaning

in that direction. Gun deaths so far in 2022, just so far, the first six months, not even full six months, five months and change, 18,697 gun deaths. Of those, 8,335 are murders, 10,362 are suicides. Hold on, let me just interrupt you. These statistics are coming from this site

called gunviolencearchive.org. And in the time between you jotted those stats down in this outline. On Sunday. Yeah, then, you know, earlier today, that gun death total was at 18,700 and I just refreshed it just now and it went up to 18,713.

Right. It notches up minute by minute. Right, and they have, you know, they have 7,500 sources. They're getting law enforcement reports. They're getting government sources and media sources. That's how they're, it's kind of like, I guess farming the internet to come up with this database. And 284 murder suicides.

That's a plus four since Sunday. 246 mass shootings in 2022 already. 12 mass murders, 153 children under 11 were killed, 320 are injured. I know this is hard to hear. I'm not trying to make it worse, but I think it's important for us to understand this as a baseline for the rest of this conversation.

554 teens killed, 1,451 injured, 25 police officers killed, 162 injured or killed, 485 gun events used in a defensive situation. So that's 485 in a defensive situation, 634 unintentional shootings, and 512 school shootings in the United States in primary or secondary school since 2014. Right, so amongst all of those statistics,

the ones that jump out to me as most egregious and heart wrenching are 153 children under 11 killed and 512 school shootings in the US since 2014. This is not a problem that other countries have. This is completely unique to the United States. It's not even close. I mean, listen, you have the best examples are in the nineties, there was a mass shooting

at a workplace, I believe in Australia. And immediately they changed the law and people voluntarily gave up their guns. New Zealand after the Christchurch massacres at the mosques overnight, they took care of business. There's something going on here and you can point to the constitution if you want. That's what a lot of people are going to go to

but there's something going on here. It's to me, it's a little bit deeper than that. Obviously that's part of it, but we are not willing to change in the face of these kinds of outcomes. Not only are we not willing to change completely on a dime, like some of those other countries have, but we're also not willing to even do incremental changes.

And it's not that we're not willing, it's that somehow the political apparatus isn't set up to be able to get that done. So, cause the majority of people are willing to do that. Right, and we're gonna get into that. Yeah. But really all, well, we're offering, listen, Adam, we're offering up lots of prayers and lots of thoughts.

That's not nothing, right? Right, right. You know, look, I will preface my take on this by saying that I'm not against gun ownership. There's lots of people that responsibly own guns. That's fine. Most gun owners are responsible. I'm not a gun person, but I have friends that are.

And, you know, I think that the statistics bear out that most gun owners support rational and reasonable gun control, and we'll get into those statistics and I support that as well. And I just think that there is zero reason why it shouldn't be incredibly difficult to purchase a gun. The bar to accessing a weapon,

particularly a semi-automatic or an automatic weapon should be incredibly difficult. Every other thing in the United States that is dangerous or poses a safety threat to others is heavily regulated. And we accept that, except when it comes to guns. And we'll get into the reasons, the culture, how it roots into the second amendment and all this sort of stuff.

But as you pointed out, other countries with responsible gun control just do not have this issue. So yeah, I'm fed up, I'm despondent, I'm sick of the thoughts and the prayers, but I also feel this sense of despair or powerlessness that anything will ever get done here given our social and political climate.

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you on everything you just said. It's difficult to believe it's going to happen. I will say for the first time, I feel like even just some fear about like it could happen. I mean, listen, there was a situation at Zuma beach. I don't know if you ever heard about this, but there was someone that was arrested here

that deputies got to him and he had several loaded automatic weapons in his van or in like he had a trench coat on in the middle of a summer day. And it was right where we swim a lot. Like just like at Zuma right where Westward. When was this? It was like a year or two ago.

And someone saw him and reported him, saw someone acting squirrelly and reported him and the cops got to him. But like, he could have just gone down the beach. I mean, like it could happen anywhere. It's still a, I'm not, I don't wanna overstate the problem. It is still the odds are obviously minuscule

that it will happen to you, but it could happen to you anytime, anywhere you live. And for the first time that fear is kind of dripping in probably because I have a young kid, probably because my wife is Australian and she thinks it's kind of batshit crazy that nothing gets done when you have this kind of a problem. Like what does it take?

How many more children is it gonna take? And so I think that, I mean, I also think like, when it comes to weapons like AR-15s, to me it's like, I always think of the joke of like, there should be no president who wants to be president. Like we should only have reluctant presidents. Like people who wanna be president should immediately be disqualified from the job.

Right. Just on basis if they want it too much. If you want it too much, you're immediately disqualified from getting that job. If you apply to own an AR-15, you should immediately be turned down just because you want it. Only those that do not want AR-15s get AR-15s.

That's in my fantasy land. But yeah, for the most part, I'm with you on all of this. But how do we, you wanna feel hopeful. It's hard to feel hopeful in this moment. Like it was a very tough week to be thinking about everything that went down, the way it went down. The fact that this guy waited till he was 18 and then bought it, even though he had-

No problemo. Even though he had social media posts out there. Did he buy them online? I can't remember. No, I think he went to a gun shop. Oh, he did, a shop or a show? I don't know, but I think he bought them in person. He waited until he was 18.

He had social media posts that were alarming out there. Nobody reported him. The guy at Sandy Hook was given a gun by his mom. So like, listen, age limits will only help so much because the mom gave him the gun in the Sandy Hook situation. So we're not trying to say any solutions are perfect solutions,

but it would be nice to try something. Right, try something. Like let's get into the solution rather than throw up our hands and say, well, we can't solve this problem. There's nothing that can be done. We're just gonna have to learn to live with mass shootings. Like it's insanity.

It is insanity. Because for every proposed solution that you offer, there's a rebuttal as to why it won't work. Trevor Noah did a pretty interesting monologue on this the other day, and I'll link that up in the show notes. But he basically goes on this rant where kind of taking on that argument the other day and I'll link that up in the show notes. But he basically goes on this rant where, you know,

kind of taking on that argument of why all these things won't work and just basically saying we have to do something like, okay, it's not perfect. And maybe it won't work as well as we hope it might, but we have to be in the process of trying these things and iterating it because that's how you make progress. But to sit on your hands and just say,

well, I guess there's nothing we can do is complete insanity. Right, it's insanity. I mean, right when it happened, I did tweet out that this is not a mental health issue. It's an access to deadly weapons issue. I do believe that. I don't think it is a mental health issue. I've looked at the statistics.

Anyone who says that it is, is kidding themselves. That's not to say people who do these things are not mentally ill. It's to say that there's other countries with mentally ill people where it doesn't happen. And the reason is they can't get the weapon. So it's the same thing we talked about with Mo's killer. If she was just upset and distraught

and like having a breakdown, but couldn't fire a weapon, there'd be three lives that would be radically different right now. Yeah, I mean, sure. Not to mention all the family members. That doesn't mean there isn't a mental health problem. Clearly there's a mental health problem and anybody who goes into an elementary school

and shoots it up is mentally unhinged. Of course, but the fact that we have mental health issues in this country is not the reason it happened. No, it's the free unfettered access to guns that allows the mentally unstable person to perpetrate the harm. And that's what needs to be addressed. So why don't we go through all of these things?

And just as a caveat before getting into that on the subject of AR-15s and mass shootings and school shootings, in order to be kind of intellectually rigorous about this, I do think it's important to point out that of course the mass shootings and particularly the school shootings are gonna capture the headlines

because it is so devastating. But when you go to this gun violence website and you look at the statistics, you realize that those are but a very small portion of the total incidents of gun violence, injuries, and deaths every year. Like you can even go to all these charts and- More than half are suicide. And so, you know, the AR-15 is like the low hanging fruit

because that's the gun of choice for these sorts of incidents. But most of these gun violence incidents are by dent of, you know, a handgun generally, you know, and often a semi-automatic handgun. We'll get to some reporting around this, but David Frum has been pretty good on the subject matter as a traditional conservative voice

writing in the Atlantic about this topic. And he has some pretty insightful things to say about how we think about the school shootings versus the bigger problem that goes less addressed because it's so persistent and endemic to our culture, which is just gun violence and private gun owners in their home and how when you have a gun in the home,

even for self-defense reasons, it becomes a catalyst for a lot of this harm we're seeing. But in any case, to kind of go through these opposition points, you said the first one, which is this is a mental health issue, not a gun issue. Which is like the first thing all the Republican leaders were saying.

I think it's both. It annoys me that we have to pick one or the other. Of course, it's both. Like, can we not talk about this in a nuanced way? We have a gun issue and we have a mental health issue. There are mental health concerns. Like I said, nobody shoots up a school if they're not mentally unhinged.

And we also can't extricate these individuals and the harm that they're perpetrating from the impact that social media is having on radicalizing these individuals. There's a New York Times article about this that you shared with me about the Buffalo guy. And they kind of go through his entire social media diet and they can pinpoint like where he gets activated

and how he becomes more inclined to violence by tracing the videos he was watching, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, that's the larger issue also that comes into play. And I guess my point being that this is not something that we can look at in a binary context. Like all these complicated things are coming into play.

Not the least of which is gun culture, right? When you're seeing on social media, these families where they're all holding their AR-15s and things like that, like what is the message that we're sending and how is that being interpreted by young people? So in my opinion, we do need better mental health programs, but the truth of the matter is for all the decrying

about how this is a mental health issue and not a guns issue, you know, the Republicans or the right have really done very little on either front. It's, you know, it's sort of a talking point to say it's a mental health issue, but it's not like they're hard at work in addressing that. No, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott,

in April slashed over $200 million from the Texas department budget that oversees mental health services. And as soon as of all day happened, he said it was a mental health issue. Mental health has never been an issue that Republicans have championed in any budgetary kind of way.

It's always been kind of a scapegoated thing. And so this is what's happening. So, but when you say it's a mental health issue, not a guns issue, and then you do neither, you know, why are you in power? That's the one thing I wanna, like when this something like this happens, right? You're in power, you wanted power, you're there.

How can you possibly wanna be a power player and have see something like this happen and do fucking nothing? Because you're inferring that the reason they're in power is to represent the people's best interest. When in truth, power is there to basically extend power. Right? And in order to extend power, you have to play to your base

and you have to appease the people who are funding your campaigns. So you get to power and your service is power itself. It's not the children that you are supposed to care for. It's just insanity. I mean, that leads to the next opposition point, which is my favorite. We need to arm the schools with militias

and we need to restrict ingress with having just one door in and out of these schools. How would fire departments feel about that? Let's create a fire hazard out of it. I mean, this idea, and sort of Ted Cruz is the face of this one, like let's just make sure that there are armed militias outside of every school and there should just be one door.

Like, does he actually believe this? Because to me, I'm like, you're either stupid or you're a liar because this is just more insanity. Let's not look at the real issue here, which is how a young person has such unfettered access to a powerful weapon that can destroy so many people. Instead, let's skirt around that and come up with this other absurd rationale

for addressing this situation so we can sidestep gun control altogether. I don't think he's stupid, but didn't he- He can't believe in his heart of hearts that this is a real, that that is a viable solution. I have no idea. Didn't he go to the NRA? Isn't he one of the few people that turned up there and spoke at the NRA convention?

I believe he was. I don't know, I think he did. Well, one thing I know for sure is that when the Uvalde funerals began, he was playing poker and he shared a video of himself playing poker, which at the very, to give him the most charitable interpretation of that is in unbelievably poor taste. So I don't understand the mentality of somebody

who thinks that that would be a good idea to share that video of him playing poker on social media in the midst of this crisis. And to literally look at camera and talk about patrolling schools with militia. Basically saying that the solution to this gun problem is more guns, which is all the more absurd by virtue of the fact that the police completely bungled

their ability to manage the Uvalde situation and allowed this kid to go into the school and sat on their hands and did nothing and even prevented parents from jumping into action. Now, when you have a kid who's wearing a bulletproof vest and he's completely armed to the gills and he's got all of these jacket,

you know, like the ammunition. Oh, yeah, the cartridges. The cartridges, exactly. And this automatic rifle, and then you have cops who are, they're not on an equal footing with that. And they're afraid of their lives. But you're supposed to put your life on the line for children if you're a cop.

I mean, you're supposed to. But basically it's exposing the fruitlessness of that option. Right, I mean, it didn't work. I have family members that have guns. I have no problem with people who are gun owners responsibly. I will say it takes a special kind of asshole

to go to an NRA conference days after the Uvalde massacre. That's my feeling about it. Like if you go there, whether you're a spectator, a purchaser, you have a gun show, you're speaking there. That says a lot about your priorities, man. What's interesting about the NRA and the power that it wields as a lobbying organization is that it's completely out of step with its membership.

Because if you look at the polling and the statistics, you realize that people overwhelmingly support rational gun control. Like you pulled together some polling on this. You wanna go through it? Yeah, maybe let's just go through that right now. So the majority of Americans support the right to own a gun.

That's just the facts. 40% of households have at least one firearm. A lot of this is from this Pew Research study that came out in September, 2021. So they did a lot of polling on it, on this issue and from a variety of vantage points and came up with this. So the majority of Americans do support gun ownership. 40% of households have at least one firearm,

but three quarters of Americans believe gun violence is a big or moderately big problem. And 53% favor stricter gun laws. That's as of April, 2021. We know that the number has risen since Uvalde. There's been some polling since then that has shown that that number has gone up, possibly approaching 60%. That might seem low, but remember there's an urban-rural divide going on here and people in rural areas will have more guns and will favor having them a lot more than the urban resident. There is, let's see, 87% of Americans,

that includes 85% of GOP voters, want legislation that prevents mentally ill people from buying guns. 85% of GOP. 87 and 85 of the GOP, yes. Okay, right, 85% of GOP voters. So that's great. Like that's a really powerful statistic.

Yes, and 81% favor strict background checks. That's an overall 81. 64% want to ban high capacity magazines. That's over 10 rounds. That's what you were talking about. Right, magazine, that was the word I was searching for. And 63% want an outright assault weapons ban like we had for what, 20 years or so.

That just expired not too long ago. The most alarming statistics I could find though is this recent CBS News poll. I think it came out today, maybe the last couple of days. 44% of Republicans now say that mass shootings are something we have to accept. It's so strange to hear that in contrast to this polling that 85% of GOP voters wanna prevent mentally ill people

from buying guns. Like how did those two things square with each other? I think it just square, there's a percentage of that that want it to change, but don't think it will. So therefore they are kind of more like, it's not going to change, therefore we need to accept it as it is.

And there is some reporting. Like if you look at the more conservative judicial branch, it's gotten more conservative. It's gotten, it's hewn more towards constitutional conservatism, which means second amendment, kind of taking it literally to a point where it really never was intended. Remember when the second amendment was written,

people were shooting guns with muskets and it was like one little ball. And it took like a couple of minutes to load that thing. And now it's a different story. Of course, which is why it's problematic to be a strict constructionist or to try to intuit, you know, the hearts and minds and the manner in which the founders, you know,

meant these words to be put into use. Yeah, why don't you get into the second amendment? I know you had some stuff on the second amendment. Yeah, well, I mean, I think, as we kind of go through all of the opposition points, it's like, well, we have a second amendment right to bear arms. The second amendment specifically to quote it says,

a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And when you kind of parse that and try to understand what it's saying, you can't help but think, well, what does well-regulated mean, what does militia mean?

And all of these words and phrases over the years have been interpreted by the judiciary to the point where we've broadened how we define those things to the extent that we allow people to bear arms in the way that they do today. There was a case, a Supreme Court case, I think it was 13 years ago, I'm not sure,

District of Columbia versus Heller, where the court for the first time recognized people's constitutional right to own firearms as individuals, not just as members of a well-regulated militia. Because prior to that, you could say, well, are you a well-regulated militia when you walk into an elementary school

and gun everyone down? Well, Heller allows individuals to fall within that definition. Which just doesn't make sense. Right, but when you think about what the Second Amendment really means and how it was intended, basically James Madison was thinking of it

as a way for states to repel the danger of the federal government, right? Right. And at the time, state militias were basically people that lived at home and they got the call and they came out with their gun. The union being formed out of this tension between states' rights and federal rights, right?

And at a time where states really wanted to be kind of independent nation states within the republic. We think about our country as a democracy, but it's really a democratic Republic. What are the states rights vis-a-vis the federal government and what should happen if the federal government extends the boundaries in the exercise of its power, we need to reserve the right for people to rise up

against that power, which makes sense, but nobody like to your point of muskets, nobody could have imagined guns progressing to the point that they are today. And I don't think any founding father, if they had been given a looking glass to see what's occurring today, would interpret what they meant by the second amendment

to allow what is unfolding before our very eyes in real time, day in and day out. Yeah, and so that one case basically is what expanded the aperture from well regulated militia to individuals. So it allowed people to bear arms in their homes, but it was not unlimited in scope. It did not permit the right to keep and carry any weapon

in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. So there were sort of restrictions on that. And what I mean by that is it is totally constitutional to impose conditions and qualifications on the sale of arms like universal background checks. Nine out of 10 support this. We went through the polls. What's interesting is that half of the people

who are polled already believe that universal background checks are a thing, meaning federally mandated background checks. They don't realize that actually many states don't require this. And one out of four guns are sold without a background check. And background checks are criminal background checks.

They're not like the kid in Uvalde didn't have a criminal record. So he would have gotten cleared anyway. Some people are saying, you got to be 25 to rent a car without special dispensation. Maybe we should do something 21 to, you have to be 21 to rent a car without special dispensation. Maybe we should do something 21 to, you have to be 21 to buy a six pack of beer. Maybe you should have to be 21 to purchase a gun.

But there's a columnist at the New York Times, Ross Dutaut. I don't forget how to- Yeah, I know who you mean. Yeah, Dutaut. Yeah, I have that Indian piece here. He is saying, look, instead of doing that, why don't you make it really hard for troubled young men to get these guns?

And one way of doing that isn't an outright ban or an age limit, but if you are a young man and you want this gun, well, then you have to go through a lot more hoops than a 50 year old. Sure. You know, so, and the hoops would include- Seems reasonable. Like a social media audit,

two letters from people who can vouch for you in writing that you're not, you know, a strict background check, some counseling perhaps, something real, something like, how about if you just required a class to be able to be licensed and then to buy a weapon, if you just had to take a class like driver's head. Like driver's head, yeah. And you had an instructor in front of you,

you would weed out a lot of these people. If you just had to take a class, like just that. But there's nothing we can do, Adam. Right. We can't do anything about this problem. I can't wait to talk to Senator Booker about this because I know there's a group of senators, a bipartisan group trying to hash out something

to get something moving. We'll see if that prevails or not in the next weeks, but- It's so frustrating and infuriating that we can't get off the dime on this. I was listening to Scott Galloway the other day. It's sort of like, okay, we understand where the right sits on this. We understand the left's perspective on this as well.

Why can't we move the needle at all? And he called it a war between the wrong and the ineffectual, right? Yeah. The left not being able to basically accomplish anything and the other side being wrong headed in how they're thinking about this problem and their reluctance or failure to address it at all.

You know, I was looking, I was thinking about it. Like why are guns so uniquely American? And you think from a storytelling perspective where I always default to, we're a country born of revolution and bondage where guns played the key role of liberator and oppressor. We had the wild west and expansion, the manhood that came along with the guns,

the high plains drifter, the John Wayne shit that happened in real life in 19th century. And then obviously on the big screens, then you had in the eighties, kind of this hip hop culture where guns became a way of life in the inner cities and kind of manhood as well as dominance. But other countries love Westerns and hip hop and they don't have our problems.

So then you come back around to this bigger problem and it's not just access to firearms, but like, what is it about us? Like, why do we lack empathy and responsibility for one another in a way that other countries don't? And I really do believe that we do have that problem. Like we don't care about another's welfare

as much as our own here. And that's different than the way it is in a lot of countries. I'm not saying that other countries are, you know, perfect and angelic or anything, but there is an acknowledgement that our fates are tied up with one another. Yeah, it's a great insight.

And I think it's very true. And I think it tracks back to the Genesis of the country where liberty became the priority. Like all these people who came to America so that they could do what the fuck they wanted to. Right. I mean, that's bred into the DNA of how this country was born, right?

And I think over time that empathy has constricted and extends perhaps only to one's very small circle. And as we become more and more isolated and less sort of communitarian in how we live our lives, ensconced in our homes on cul-de-sacs, et cetera, we're more and more separated from our fellow individuals. I think that sphere of empathy continues to dwindle.

And what gets eclipsed in all of this is the other side of liberty, which is responsibility. Like you can't have liberty without responsibility. And in the United States, people are gung-ho for liberty, but when it comes to talking about responsibility, no one really wants to rise to that occasion. And this is something I talked at length about with Ryan Holiday when he was on the podcast recently.

We didn't talk about it in the context of guns specifically, but it's certainly applicable to that. Like we want what we want and we wanna be able to do whatever we wanna do. And when it comes to our responsibility to the collective, we don't wanna hear about that. And that is a very weird American thing. It's a self-destructive seed

that seems to be like replicating, you know, like if that's how we feel, there's a self-destructive kind of code that's gonna just could destroy it all. Because if you don't care, and that's the biggest problem why we can't, and we're getting more and more polarized and we demonize one another to the point.

I mean, I realized I called anyone who went to an NRA convention an asshole, which is demonizing. But at the same time- Yeah, like at least you're calling yourself out with some level of self-awareness around that. I'm not saying I'm not part of the problem. What I am saying is both things can be true.

And we do have this empathy gap. And until we start to respect one another and care about each other's fates, the problem is it does feel like when you're on the left, it does feel like we care about people's fates more than the people who are the strict individualists, which tend to be on the right. And so that's kind of comes with its own thorny inability

to then talk to each other because no one likes being talked down to and no one likes someone who's a selfish person. So we have to figure out a way to look past that. Hopefully that's going to happen. That's what senators and congressmen are supposed to be able to do, right? That's what politics is about.

Which is why I'm so interested to talk to Senator Booker. Like, why is this such an intractable problem? Like, what is the lived experience of being in the Senate, being passionate about this issue and not being able to kind of get any traction to get things voted on at the very least? Like how are those obstacles created, faced, met, and hopefully, you know, at some point overcome?

Well, and how do you live with yourself if you're on the other side of it and your whole goal is to scuttle votes like this? Like how do you live with yourself if you're on the other side of it and your whole goal is to scuttle votes like this? Like, how do you live? Like, do people live in an absence of guilt? Like I live with guilt as a constant shadow. It's hard for me to wrap my head around. Yeah, like the mentality of somebody

who is trying to prevent all of these measures from going into effect. I mean, it is Occam's razor. Like you can say whatever you want and throw all those oppositional arguments out there. We need to arm the schools with militia, the ad hominem attacks, you're just a libtard, second amendment, whatever.

But ultimately, like what is the most obvious thing that we could do right now? We can restrict access to deadly weapons from people who are not suitable or mature enough to handle them. Can we not at least accomplish that? We all agree on this. Right.

People that are trying to block this from getting passed or being put into motion, I have a really hard time trying to understand it. And you know what? Maybe I'm missing something. The other argument being like, they're gonna take all your guns away. Like nobody's saying that.

No. We're just saying, let's be reasonable here. It did happen in Australia, right? So that's what happened in Australia, but they passed a huge kind of all encompassing gun control measure and people did give up their guns. They don't have a second amendment. They don't have a second amendment. They don't have a second amendment.

I also think it's funny, these people running for office, how often they're disparaging government, like Marjorie Taylor Greene does it all the time. By the way, she works for the government. She is part of the government, hates the government. She's part of, she hates her, that's self-hating. She hates herself. Dr. Oz has that funny video about like,

where he's like firing weapons. I mean, it's this video is bananas. Yeah, wasn't he like, didn't he get famous because of Oprah? Well, I don't know what the beginning of him being famous was, but anyway. I overly intrusive government. It's so bizarre to see that video. Like, cause I think of him being famous was, but anyway. I overly choose the government. It's so bizarre to see that video.

Like, cause I think of him as the guy with the daily talk show talking about like health and alternative medicine and stuff like that. And like suddenly he's like out shooting guns and you know, talking about all this stuff that like, is this real? Like, are you just creating this character because you're running for office,

railing against the government to your point, in an attempt to become part of the government. Yes, they rail against the government to try to become part of the government so they can do nothing when children are murdered in their classroom. It's a strange obsession. It really is.

Yeah. It's also interesting, there's a weird, like ironic twist to all of this because those that railed the hardest against mask mandates in schools, like kind of decrying the mental health implications of kids having to wear masks in the classroom are the same people who are not interested

in gun control measures that would reduce the likelihood of a school shooting. Yes. And want it to be more militarized. want the classroom to be more militarized, not less militarized. What are the mental health implications on kids of schools being hyper-militarized? Well, that same Times column is basically saying,

he thinks like the more militarized you make it, the more you bring up school shootings, the more you have these kind of active shooter drills, the more likely some kid, somebody's gonna disturb kid is gonna, yeah. So it's a self fulfilling prophecy. You know, that kind of stuff happens. Like we've talked about the hip hop.

I think last time we talked, when we talked about the abortion, we talked about the same hypocrisy is like, I want Liberty, but you can't have an abortion, you know, like, and vice versa, I'm pro-choice, but you have to wear the mask. And we talked about that. It's not necessarily an equal thing, but you know,

there is that irony that we're always trying to, that often it's the side of convenience. It's just, it's more grotesque in this instance. Yeah. Yeah. Before we move on, I did more grotesque in this instance. Yeah. Yeah. Before we move on, I did wanna circle back on David Frum because I think he has done some compelling writing on this. Again, he's a conservative, a traditional conservative with a pretty rational take.

When you say traditional conservative, you mean? Like just, you know, he was a Republican. I can't remember what administration he worked in, but you know, he has a long history of being a conservative thinker, but also a really smart guy who is outraged by what he's seeing right now in terms of gun violence and has written a bunch of pieces for the Atlantic, which I'll hyperlink in the show notes

because I think they're worth your time. And anything else we wanna point out on this before we pivot to Corey? Well, I mean, when you think about what David Frum is saying is basically some of the same stuff that we've been talking about, right? Like he wants rational measures that make it harder for kids and innocent people to be killed and mass.

Like this is all we're asking for. So we can only hope that we're heading in that direction. We need a little bit more than hope. Yeah. And it goes back to that despairing when you see Columbine and Sandy Hook and nothing happens. And here we are again, it did feel different with Uvalde. It did.

Because the nation and really the world was so outraged and activated by that, that there was a sense like, okay, maybe this is the point where the tide turns. Our greatest fear of course, being that we just move on. And the way that our news cycle happens so quickly these days, you know, that's my fear. That we're just gonna move on and forget about it? Until it happens again.

And then we'll have the same conversation and the same conversation. So. That's what we hope doesn't happen. Cause we thought Sandy Hook was gonna be the end of the line right where something would finally happen and it didn't work out. Right, and we should also point out

that in terms of SCOTUS, we're anticipating a decision, it could be in the next few weeks, I think it's meant for the fall, but the Supreme Court is on the precipice of delivering an opinion in the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruin, which is a decision that could strike down concealed carry bands,

even in the few states that still have them. So basically that would mean more guns, more places, fewer checks, fewer protections. It's basically, you know, this punctuation mark on how we're moving backwards and downwards. And to use David Frum's words, kind of plunging towards barbarism. Right, and so-

Because SCOTUS is obviously unshackled from public opinion and the legislature and it's packed to the right right now. So they're positioned to make a decision that could very well make that possible. There's a couple of things that are also popping up though that can be looked at as positive. I believe that the police,

the national kind of police union consortium that represents all the police unions in different localities has come out in favor of, you know, some gun control in the wake of Evaldi. That's happened. Governor Newsom, they just passed a law here in California that you can sue somebody who's involved in a mass shooting. You can sue them and you can sue anybody involved

in helping them carry out their mass shootings. It's basically using that same abortion law that's been passed in some states, in Republican states, and using that same abortion law that's been passed in some states in Republican states and using that same lawsuit idea that you can, as private citizen can sue someone who gets an abortion, can sue the doctor, same idea in this sense. You can sue the gun shop that sells the weapon. You can sue the person who's involved

in the family that's involved. So there are people trying different new tactics, new things. This police union is not typically someone that, an organization that gets onto progressive causes. So the fact is this should not be a progressive, should not be a right or left cause. It's the welfare of our children.

Yeah, and as the polling demonstrates, it isn't a left or right thing. It's an everybody thing. It is. All right. So we're going to take a quick break and we'll reconvene with the good Senator and hopefully he has some thoughts for us. Hey, Rich, how are you? How's it going, man? Hey, Rich, how are you? How's it going, man? It's been an emotionally raw stretch, but I wouldn't want people to think wrongly of me when I say I go to bed with you often. I promise not to say that publicly, although this is being recorded now, so that could be held against me. But I just finished your talk with a guy I've loved, even though back then he was a think

tank on the other side of the aisle, but I've always loved Arthur Brooks. He's just such a- Arthur Brooks. Yeah. That was a great conversation. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I'm touched and honored that you make the time to listen to the show. I can't believe that's possible, but Arthur makes my job easy. He's such a beautiful font of wisdom. And it is interesting as him being somebody who was head of a conservative think tank. My sense is that he really doesn't wanna talk

about politics. That's not his interest level right now. I mean, you covered it well, which all of us being in our 50s, he definitely has made a shift away from this crazy think tank world but he was moving that way he wrote this amazing book about love um which i think was one before this one that i i my stack of books right now is just trying to figure out how do we talk to each other in a country that's spiraling uh in in kind of a into a culture of

contempt yeah and he's's been really thoughtful about that and I think highly influenced by the Dalai Lama. Yeah, I think that's accurate. And I think that's a good place to just jump right into it. I mean, I know your time's tight and I really appreciate you carving out- I've been looking at the staff, they said 15 minutes. I've been looking to talk to Rich Roll for like,

since I started listening to his podcast. I fell in love with your podcast. It was one of your best of years, I've been looking to talk to Rich Roll for like, since I started listening to his podcast, I fell in love with your podcast. It was one of your best of years, you know, like at the end of the year, you do the, you sample from all the ones. So I've been looking to have a conversation with you for a very long time. So I told my staff to give me at least an extra 15 minutes

because I knew I was going to fanboy all over you for the first 15 and we wouldn't get to the subject matter. Well, you got me all buttered up and I'm going to hold you to that because I'm definitely, you know, somebody who wants to get you in the studio. And we'll do the full Kit and Kaboodle podcast at some point when your schedule permits. Your journey, I read Finding Ultra and I think that you can see, in my opinion, the universe sort of using you. You can see, in my opinion, the universe sort of using you. I think that not only athletics, but also your struggles with addiction have made your power of empathy and your ability to connect. You know, I always say that broken people, we're all broken more than we maybe want to

admit. Not only does it let good stuff in, but it also creates more points of contact, which you can connect with other broken people. And I think that you have this wonderful ability to connect with the people you interview that in a real way, in a substantive way, to go a little deeper than some of the general interviews we often see.

I think that's a gift. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's an honor to be able to do it. And it's certainly nourishing for me. And to be able to kind of give it back to the audience is just something that just gives my life purpose and meaning. So I'm very grateful to be on this journey

and to be talking to you today, my friend. Thank you. Let's get into it. Yeah, please go ahead. Obviously the country is under a lot of strain right now. We're enduring some challenges, not the least of which is all of the mass shootings, what transpired in Uvalde and subsequent incidents that we've all borne witness to these tragic events.

And so I really wanted to kind of focus the limited time that we have with you today on the subject of gun violence and gun control. And I thought it might be beneficial to just hear your perspective. Like what is your bird's eye view on kind of where we're at as a nation? How are you thinking about this issue right now?

And perhaps like some thoughts on why this is so intractable in terms of finding solutions. So I'm a kid that grew up in the suburbs and New Jersey and not part of a hunting culture. My granddad did take me out once, but it was a suburban town outside of New York and gun violence didn't affect my life.

But I've lived the last, gosh, since the late 90s in Newark, New Jersey, in the Central Ward, and gun violence immediately impacted my life. On my first nights sleeping in an apartment, I got across the street from the projects and I eventually moved into them. I started hearing gunshots at night. I still remember coming out one day and there being a sort of tail end of a shooting. And since then I've lost young kids I've known to gun violence I've lost young kids I've known to gun violence and seen the horrific everyday realities of gun violence in America. And it's often the violence we don't talk about.

It's stunning to me how we as a nation doesn't even pop into our consciousness unless we have these horrific mass shootings. But every single day, on average, more than 300 Americans are shot, over 100 Americans die. And the violence is everything from domestic violence, which we don't talk about, to suicides, which we don't talk about enough. And now we have this stunning rise of hate in our country, where since 9-11, we've lost more Americans due to Americans killing Americans, right wing groups from synagogues to churches to supermarkets. And then obviously school shootings like we just had. So this is a very personal issue for me. Some of my own personal trauma being in and around shootings. And so I came here as the only United States Senator that lives in a low-income black and brown neighborhood

who's had shootings on their block. Most recently in 2018, a young man, Shahad, who I used to live in the same building with, the police officer who was giving me the account, said it was like his head blew up. It was an assault rifle that he got. And so it's been frustrating to me to live in a country where, you know, in the time that you and I have been alive as guys in their 50s, we've had more people die to gun violence than in every single war in America combined. Yeah. I think it's too easy and convenient to say it's just Washington because we've seen change happen against impossible odds before when four little girls died in the bombing in Birmingham.

You saw a nation mobilize to demand change. And as I remind people all the time about this place, you know, there's an old trope saying here that they say often that change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington. It wasn't a bunch of guys on the Senate floor in the 1920s that said, hey, fellas, let's give these women a right to vote. It happened because people demanded it. As Frederick Douglass says, if there's no struggle, there's no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. And so we have tolerated for a very long time in this country, a level of carnage and violence and death that we've almost normalized because days and days go by without us doing enough. And so I can give

you stuff that you know, and I've listened to you enough of your podcast, and I've heard you express understandable skepticism, if not cynicism, about Washington and politics. There are very powerful lobbies. There's money. There's people's ambition. There is a real consequence to Congress people running in red districts where districts have been drawn, where they're always worried about being primaried by somebody on their right. I was on Meet the Press recently with a guy who just lost a Senate race who lowered violence in his North Carolina city 50%, but he was running against somebody that had a gun in their belt, he said, for most of their commercials. And he lost in a primary because the guy casted him soft on guns. But I think that's a convenient and easy excuse just to blame it on Washington.

It's almost like surrendering responsibility and not understanding that we all have a role to change this nightmare. And it's more than just those real things that I just mentioned. Yeah, I think that makes me wanna know more about, and my colleague, Adam Skolnick is on the line too, and I know he wants to chime in on this,

the kind of lived experience of you being a legislator, a Senator, and what that experience is like that perhaps we're not aware of. Like to the extent that there's frustration, like why can't we just get a law passed or what is actually going on? Like when you, as somebody who cares deeply about this issue and is working so diligently to change the law

and move our country forward in a new direction on this subject matter, like what are the obstacles that you encounter on a daily basis? Or what do we as the public not see about what that is like for you? So, look, I've seen the best of this place and I've seen the worst of it, you know, where we've been able to hammer out really great bills. You know, our criminal justice system is an outrage. We're a nation that takes our addicted, our mentally ill,

our poor, our black and brown. We stick them in jails when they often need help or healthcare or counseling or trauma treatment. And we put them in our jails. And we've passed some good bills to try to start changing this nation from being the country where we still are, where the one out of every three incarcerated women on the planet earth are in the United States. And so we've passed some bills that have liberated thousands of people that that's the best of us. We have a long way to go, though. And I've seen the worst of us. You know, we just passed an anti lynching bill more than a century after it was first introduced, when thousands of blacks were being killed and we couldn't even make lynching a federal crime until 2022. And so I've seen the corporate gun lobby and how powerful they are. I've seen them change. I think after Columbine, Wayne LaPierre said, we need to make universal background checks. He was for a lot of things. But the culture has slipped on, on the sort of within

the NRA world where they are resisting and fighting any change whatsoever. And they are a very powerful lobby for people who are concerned about, um, reelection. And so like right now where, where I've watched now, I've been here eight, nine years, and I have seen those Americans who are really willing to do something different, dig in, organize, show more pressure on politics, change laws on states. Since Parkland, there's been a whole lot of state laws that have changed for the better. But here, it's been more difficult. I think we're actually going to get something done. You know, I was talking with Senator Murphy and a group of House members that there's hope here that something can get done, but I'm going to be candid. It's going to be very incremental,

necessary things, but nowhere near sufficient to end the kind of carnage what we're seeing on a regular basis. Yeah. Senator Booker, you're talking about the election cycle and the pressure to get reelected. When we see these stats of the NRA and how much they're contributing to people like Mitt Romney or Mitch McConnell, people who you could argue are bigger than the NRA in some ways. They have their own kind of brand, but they're still under the sway of an organization like that.

Does that speak to how hard it is to raise money and compete in politics? Like, what is the draw there? Or like, is it more that they're afraid of the primary? Like, what do you think is the draw for some of these bigger names that you think would be able to win without them? for some of these bigger names that you think would be able to win without them? So again, getting into the psychology of your colleagues is often a dangerous odyssey. You can lose your own mind trying to figure out people's different motivations. The NRA is not the biggest donor down here. And money, I mean, it's really one of the toxins of our government, I think, when Citizens United passed and corporations now can pour tons and tons of money, it strengthens the corporate gun lobby. Cause remember these are corporations who are having a field day. They're selling guns in

our country, you know, at a level that we could have never imagined every man, woman, and child in America from babies to 99 year olds could have one gun. And then we'd still have 70 million more guns out in our streets. But I don't know if it's just the money they're contributing. And, you know, again, like for example, I gave up all corporate money. It was fourth center to do so. I just didn't want to give anybody reason to question my motives. But I know that there, as you said, there are people that can raise money if they didn't get the whatever $30,000 from the corporate gun lobby, but they, I think their power, a lot of it lies in their ability to mobilize people and get them out to vote singularly on this issue.

And that's a pretty powerful. If you know, you're in a election where if you don't have that a rating and you're going to be, you're going to be beat up by it by somebody else who really has whipped up this idea that this person is going to be a part of the group in Washington that's going to try to take away your guns. Gun sales spike when Democrats get elected because they have, again, and you can listen to the rhetoric because people are told that you're gonna lose your, people who believe, the very narrow version, believe that they're gonna lose your gun rights. So that's a base, not in my world,

but that's a base, I think, for that people are concerned about in primaries. Yeah, what's interesting is that, that being said, it does seem like the NRA is out of step with its constituency because the polling demonstrates clearly that most people are in favor of rational gun control. And yet the NRA still wields so much power

to rebut the public sentiment on this issue. And so I guess I'm curious about, you mentioned Senator Murphy, Chris Murphy from Connecticut. He's put together this bipartisan consortium of legislators to really work on rational gun control. Are you sanguine about the possibilities here? Because that does seem like something that's new and different from what we've seen in the past.

Yeah, I just wanna dwell on that point you made first, which is such an important point. And I should have mentioned it already. This is not a partisan issue. It really is not. And the problem often with our country is we try to reduce things into the binary world as STEM or Republican. I've listened to your show enough to know that you realize that's not the case. I mean, the stranglehold that big ag has down here is not a partisan issue. Chemicals that are being sprayed on our foods that are in our bloodstream, breast milk and the like, it's not a partisan issue. Tech issues are not partisan issues. And we as Americans have so much more in common. The lines that divide us are nowhere near as strong as the ties that bind us. But this political industrial complex that will try to parse us along these tribes and make us believe that we're different, that's a problem.

There's a whole raft of common sense gun safety things that I've seen comedians go to NRA conventions and ask people about universal background checks. And you just see these NRA members saying all this about, I'm worried about my guns being taken. Oh, but universal background checks, heck yeah, we need to have them to stop criminals from getting guns. So this is not a partisan issue amongst Americans. It's a partisan issue down here. And that's a lot of the disconnect. Folks have got to, on the Republican side, Democratic side, whatever you identify, begin to make this a central issue in your political behavior. As far as me being optimistic, look, I'm a prisoner of hope, but I always differentiate hope from optimism.

Hope stares the wretched truth of the world in the face, doesn't deny it, but still believes ultimately that something can be done. And so I've seen this come around and I can't, if I lost hope that we could do something, I don't think I could continue doing this job. I will tell you again that Washington Watchers do think that there are the makings right now because of, you know, Chris Murphy said this to me today, said this to a group of us today, that his sense was that a lot of folks went home and heard from people within their, that identify as their tribe, the Republicans, and were so dismayed about this. Because at the end of the day, we are all hugging our children. If you have them before they go to school, there's a lot of that worry, I think, that they're feeling, which is opening the door to do a little bit. But I do not have a belief that in this bill, we're going to see the kind of comprehensive things that most Americans, Republican, Democrat, Independent, would want to see. But we got to start, just like Trevor Noah's monologue the other day,

like we have to start somewhere and we got to iterate on that. And just to get- And I'm sorry, I love history. People look at the Civil Rights Movement, think so was in the 60s. People started in the, A. Philip Randolph and others were working on a march on Washington far before the one we know about in the 60s. They were doing activism and protests and working and making small changes. Thurgood Marshall was out there changing laws and more. So I agree with you. First of all, we have started the Parkland Kids, the Moms Demand Action, Gabby Gifford's organization. There's a chapter in every single state of Moms Demand Action, for example, that are making a difference in local elections, city, county, state elections. So this is a movement. The question is, is are you a part of it or not?

Because I think what Martin Luther King said at very frustrating points in the civil rights movement, remember his letters from the Birmingham jail were not to the racists. He was talking to good people. And what he said is what we have to repent in this day and age. And these words echo in this moment. What we have to repent for is not simply the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. And so that's the question is to me, it's very binary. Don't tell me what your beliefs are. Show me who you are through your actions. Are you part of the movement to change these laws? Are you doing more than you did before Uvalde? Are you doing more than you did before Buffalo? Or are you doing the same things you were doing before those two mass shootings

and expecting other people to make the change that you want to see in your country? Yeah. You spoke about this kind of increased contempt in terms of the volume, I guess that's speaking to polarization, but also speaking to kind of, I guess, information silos and how that can turn up the volume and the heat on some issues like this one. It seems like a tragedy like this, the breaking of all of us, right? If the United States is our common body and we're broken, it seems like that should be the place to latch on and to do some good, right? I mean, that's what we were talking about, but maybe before we started to record this interview, how a time of brokenness can be a time, can be the perfect time to come together.

Are you seeing anything like that? I know that you're kind of trying to make us not expect too much from this coming law. But are you seeing any of that? Are you hearing any of that in the hallways? A little bit more coming together at all? So I do think that they're hurt and shattered more than broken. How much a lot of us have been is creating a climate for change. And the rhythms of Washington, D.C. are often those moments where we share a common pain. Sometimes we can find common purpose. And that's, again, one of the reasons why I think we're going to get something incremental done,

or at least I'm hoping and praying that we will. But I have to be candid with you. We had a hearing today all about replacement theory. And for those who don't know what that is, it's been around for generations. It was around about the Catholics and the Southern Europeans that were coming here to replace Protestant Americans. There is a quote unquote true American. I'm a black guy who can skip Gates, trace my history back to the 1640s in this country. But there's this idea that and you hear it. You remember the marching with tiki torches in Virginia. Jews will not replace us. So the professors that were there and the experts that were there at this hearing, it was stunning to hear and to look at the data about the mainstreaming of these views. He really called it just like this resurgence of the Klan in the 1920s, which then it was a lot of Catholics hate and the like, and how we're at a perilous moment for our democracy, where you're seeing larger and larger portions view an us versus them within this country and not just

us where we're all one people with one destiny. And so I would be, I don't want to candy coat the truth of our country right now. There is a rise in hate. There is a rise in resentment. There is a culture of contempt. There are these devices that are in our lives now that have algorithms that are profiting off of making us more emotional and more involved. I tell the story even about, I'm pointing to my TV, where a friend of mine had a show on CNN. His name is Van Jones called Crossfire. And I love what Brene Brown says. She says, it's hard to hate up close, so pull people in. And they decided when him and Newt Gingrich realized they were proximate to each other and had lots in common, they wanted to do the last segment as Ceasefire. And then after

a few episodes of that, the producers stopped them because they said ratings were going down. of that, the producers stopped them because they said ratings were going down. So we have got people who are realizing the incentive, their corporate incentive, their political incentive. As I said in the hearing, if I yelled at Donald Trump during the State of the Union address, if I heckled him and screamed, you lie, you liar, I may have had a really great fundraising quarter the next quarter. I know that because when somebody yelled that to Barack Obama, they had an incredibly great fundraising quarter. And so we're building this powder keg right now where we've literally seen people whipped up to storm the Capitol of the United States. And remember, they had symbols of anti-Semitism and racism there where people are being preyed upon, their vulnerabilities, their hurt,

where people are being preyed upon, their vulnerabilities, their hurt, their trauma, their fears are being preyed upon by leaders. And that's my biggest worry for my country right now, for our country. I really worry that if we can't figure this out, if our tribalism becomes deeper and it's no longer an objective analysis, hey, this person believes in these ideas and this ideas, but it's more tribalism. We demonize each other. We so hate each other that we can't even talk to each other. I worry about the future of our country. We have got to figure out a way. And is this tied to the violence that we are seeing? Absolutely, it is. And so I just will finish this point by saying to you that I'm not despondent because I believe in the radical redemptive power of love. And I've seen the data, the scientific data that love goes viral too. In fact, if you're a Stanford researchers,

Richard Amomada, that have shown that just witnessing a kind act changes your biochemistry and makes you more likely to make change. And you can follow it two or three degrees of separation. But we are going to need a lot more committed Americans to, despite your whipped up differences with somebody, that you can still find ways to create connection and see common dignity and see common destiny. And when you asked me about how things get done down here, how they really get done, one of the best examples of getting through the crap and the obstacles is a story of my implicating myself on my own bias. We all have implicit biases. And there's a guy who's retiring named Inhofe, an Oklahoma senator who, you know, we vilify on our side. Sometimes he carried a

snowball down to the Senate floor to show that there was no climate change. But when I got down here, my mentor, a guy named Bill Bradley, told me, go to dinner with your colleagues, find ways to have one-on-ones with them. And I went to Bible study in Inhofe's office and I'll never forget walking in and I saw on his shelf a picture of him. And this challenged my implicit bias because I never thought I'd see this kind of picture. I saw a picture of him and a little black girl. And I said, sir, who's that? And he says, it's my daughter. And he tells me this powerful story about him adopting her at a tough circumstances. Fast forward months later, many months later, there's a big education bill going through. And I want to get an amendment on this bill about

homeless and foster kids. And I'm told there's no amendments being allowed. Lamar Alexander was blocking the bill. But I remember this point of human connection. And I went to Inhofe, summoning the spirit of his daughter and the connection I felt with his humanity that we often don't see when we're on different sides of the political aisle. And I'll never forget, he told me, I will co-sponsor your amendment on a bill that no amendments were being allowed. I had this powerful chairman, then I got Chuck Grassley, then we got other Republicans, and it's now the law of the land. And that's just one small story. I think we need millions of those stories in all of our lives to begin to start to heal the fabric and break through the bias and the venom and all those

who profit off of our hate or our contempt for each other. Very powerfully put and beautifully stated. I mean, thank you for that. I mean, certainly love connection. These are the antidotes to the rift that is increasingly dividing us and the misalignment of incentives, whether technological or economic that are driving this. I mean, we're close enough in age, Senator, that we remember a time when a crisis befell our country,

it brought us together. It didn't drive us apart into our silos and make us argue with each other. And it really is an existential crisis. And if we can't see our way forward from that, none of the other issues are ever gonna get addressed. So I appreciate you pointing that out. And I know your time is running out with us,

but it was amazing to have a few minutes to talk to you. And I appreciate you sharing with us and our audience. And I really do hope that at some point in the not too distant future, I can sit down with you in person and do a full-blown podcast. Hey, Rich, can I make one more, perhaps emotional plea to your audience?

Yeah, sure. I love your podcast. I love listening to the two of you go at it during the new kind of evolution of your podcast, where you have this, you two interstitially. And I just trust and believe that not only is your podcast strong, but it appeals to people across the political spectrum and from all different backgrounds. And the appeal I want to make to you is that I was doing a New York Times editorial, and they asked me, they were doing fun questions at the end. They were interviewing all the

Democratic presidential candidates, and they asked me funny questions. And they asked me a question, what was the biggest mistake you've ever made? And I thought they thought they were going to get a light answer. And I said, look, the biggest mistake I made was when I was living in these high rise projects in the lobby of the building. I lived there for eight years, this place called Brick Towers. And I watched these little amazing boys grow up, all black boys. The leader of the crew was my dad incarnate. And they were so similar. They were both whip smart, charismatic, born leaders, both born at or below the poverty line, both weren't raised by their mothers, raised by their grandmothers. There's just so many

similarities. It's eerie to me. One day I came home smelling something I hadn't smelled since the days of the enchanted broccoli forest, which I smelled it often at Stanford, but I smelled it in my lobby, which was pot. And Stanford students have a lot more wider margins to experiment with drugs than Black kids in inner city communities. And I immediately thought to myself, I got to lean in more. And I took them to the movies and I took them out to diners. I asked them what their dreams were, and they were really humble dreams. I still remember when one of them told me they wanted to learn how to repair cars and maybe one day have a shop. And I, boom, I thought, okay, I'm going to fix you guys up with mentors that can help you with all of your dreams and made commitments to them that I didn't immediately follow through on because I was too busy. I was running to become mayor of the city of Newark.

And even though I was busy and didn't follow through, they would still greet me in the lobby on the end of long campaigning days and cheer me on, lift me up. And then I get elected and I have death threats against me. So they surround me with police officers, station cops in the lobby of the building and the project, safest projects I think I'd been in a long time. But the kids, I don't care who you are, high school kids don't want to hang out where the police are. So I just didn't see these young people. But in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm on a mission to help all the children of the city. I'm not, I know I'll reconnect with them soon. And then a month into my time in office, I'm called to a court street in Newark and I get there after a shooting and there's a body covered up and I barely affirmed the death on the sidewalk. And I'm too busy ministering to the lead to the living and telling them what we're going to do to drive crime down.

And I get home that night and I'm going through my Blackberry reading reports. And the name of the murder was Hassan, the young man from my lobby. was Hassan, the young man from my lobby. And I will never tell you, talk about shattered. God literally put my dad in front of me. My dad used to talk about the conspiracy of love, all the small acts of kindness that helped him get from a rural poor black boy in the 1930s and 40s to become an IBM executive. All the acts of kindness, people going out of their way. And here I had a chance to pay it forward. And I'll never forget going to his

funeral, which was like in the bottom of the Perry's Funeral Home in Newark. And it was like descending into the hull of a ship. We were all tied together in grief, wailing and moaning, chained to this horrific daily occurrence in America, which is another young boy in a box. And it haunts me to this day, and I regret it to this day, that I didn't do more. And so I don't know what it will take for all of us to understand that we are so connected, that what you do matters. No matter how busy you are, there's something more you can do to end this death, the pain, the hurt, the devastation that happens when a young man commits suicide. Or a woman gets killed by her boyfriend or a gun, a legal weapon, because it was not a background check, gets into the streets of communities like mine and is used for a horrific murder. And so my appeal to the folks here is

that democracy is not a spectator sport. It really isn't. You get the government you deserve. And people before us sacrificed, sweat, bled, were willing to die to try to bend the arc of this nation's moral truth. And if there's ever a time to lean in more, to change something that's not partisan, it's right now. Because you and I, I worry, even though I think we're going to pass some legislation, I worry that you may call me up and say, hey, can we have another 15 minutes to have a conversation about why do we have another mass shooting? And this time, God forbid, if you're a listener here, God forbid, it's your neighborhood, your school, your mosque, your supermarket, your neighborhood. And you're

wondering why I didn't do more to stop that pain and that horror from visiting upon your life. Wow. That's amazing words, Senator. Thank you so much for telling us that and sharing that it's like it must weigh heavy every day these kinds of things that you've witnessed and then also hear about you must get every day and another tragic story like that how do you deal with that on a daily basis like the responsibility you carry and the weight of all of that? Look, I am who I am because a community that I'm not from embraced me, a young law student from Yale who thought I was some kind of savior and knocked me on my ass. People like Frank Hutchins and Miss Virginia Jones, Miss Yancey, you know,

Miss Wright. I can tell you the women who taught me. I say I got my BA from Stanford, but my PhD on the streets of Newark. And I have too many stories about gun violence. But, you know, on the worst moment for me, because it was just so traumatizing, we hear these stories about the shootings where we're not seeing the bodies. Well, I was on a scene of a shooting where a teenager got shot multiple times and I was the person trying to stop them from bleeding to death. And it was the most gruesome thing I'd ever experienced. His foamy blood was coming from his mouth, blood pouring from his chest. And I just was doing, I think about it now, no training. So I'm sticking my hand from his mouth, blood pouring from his chest. And I just was doing, I think about it now,

no training. So I'm sticking my hand in his mouth, thinking if I just can clear away the passage for him to breathe because he's choking on his blood. And I remember that night trying to scrub this boy's blood off of my hands. And I remember I have never felt more anger at my country than I did then. And I never felt more of wanting to quit and just be done with this. Why was I even trying when the problem seemed so much bigger than me? And I came down into that lobby where the boys hang out the next morning and walk through the lobby. It was early in the morning, so nobody was there. And I walk into the courtyard. And this is why I believe in a larger power, because I was drowning. I was done.

It was over. And then I see the tenant president, this elderly woman, Miss Virginia Jones, who had her son murdered in the lobby in which I lived years before I moved in. A woman had every reason to move out of those projects. In fact, I know the money she made. I know where she worked. She didn't have to live in this dangerous neighborhood, especially after her son was killed. And I remember walking out and being frozen because I saw her back to me.

And then she turns around almost like she could hear my hurt. And then she sees me and she does the only thing that I needed at that moment, not say a word. She just opened her arms. And I ran across that courtyard like a little boy running to his mom. And I'm much bigger than she is, but I felt like I disappeared in her arms and she held me. And this is the gift she gave me as I started sobbing. She just said two words over and over that were, hold on to now when I hurt and when I get angry and when I don't

understand my country and where I want to give up. And I think about women like that who never give up. I think about kids from Parkland who turned their pain into purpose. I think of moms demand action. People have lost and turned their hurt into action. And this woman just rubs my back and she says two words that I held onto during my times mayor and in my toughest days here. And she just says to me, she's rubbing my back. She says, stay faithful, stay faithful, stay faithful. And so I believe that what real hope is about, it's like Ms. Jones, it's like hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word, that no matter how much it visits upon you, you still have agency, you still have power, even if it's just the defiance of keeping going

and not giving up. And so, yeah, I see shrines on my streets, teddy bears and candles too many damn times. And it's unfortunately Black children or Latino children who don't seem to count as much sometimes to the media. They don't seem to get the same coverage. And I get angry about systems that date back to, you know, when we had overt redlining, they've created a lot of the pain and hurt. But I will tell you this, we've come this far by faith and I have no right to give up, especially when others didn't. And the real challenge I see, again, is how do we make other people care? I don't need to change one person's mind who might believe that we shouldn't pass universal background checks or gun licensing, or I don't have to change one person's mind. All we have to do is get the people who share our beliefs, which is

the majority of us, to do a lot more, to show their faith. Because as my religious tradition says, and it's a terrible foreboding thing to say, but it says faith without works is dead. without works is dead. Very true. Wow, I'm just trying to process everything that you just shared. It's such a powerful story. And I think if you can carry that resonance of hope and channel that into action,

it's inspiring for the rest of us who might feel paralyzed or powerless or as if our actions don't really matter because they do. And in this democratic republic that we're privileged to live in, it's incumbent upon all of us to shoulder that responsibility and do what we can to put in motion the better world that we want for ourselves

and future generations. And a lot of, you have a lot of athletes that listen to this and it's just very obvious, like nothing worthwhile is easy. Nothing that I watched you do, you don't just get up in the morning and win a national championship or win a heavyweight boxing match. It is hard. It takes endurance and resilience and pushing through pain and pushing through a setback. But that's what it takes to be great. And I do believe in the greatness of this country. I think American history is a perpetual testimony to the achievement of the impossible. But we who are the inheritors of this impossible dream

that is America have got to, as I failed to do in that one instance with my dad, we've got to prove worthy of it by paying it forward through our sacrifice and our struggle. You mentioned, just if I could trouble you with just one last recommendation, because you've been so generous with your time, but you mentioned that you're asking us to give more and do more. And I see a lot of the volume on the political discussion has gone up. The frequency that the average person is talking about politics has gone way up. And a lot of that you

poignantly pointed out is related to our phones and obviously that addiction. But often what we're doing is just shouting into the void. There's not really much getting accomplished other than a bunch of information soup, which doesn't help us actually, it hurts us. What would you say would be, you've mentioned some great organizations,

what kind of, if there's a couple of concrete steps that you could recommend for listeners to kind of get involved or a first step to getting more active? Yeah, I would find others and connect with others that are, that are doing that. I mean, this is the great thing about America now and these devices, I have to say, cause I don't want to say there's only negative to them is that your fingertips away are the ability to connect with people that are probably two or three steps ahead of you, sometimes 10 or a mile ahead of you in understanding what makes a difference, makes a change. And so do some research, find these organizations, find these people who are committed to this kind of change and never underestimate that you can make a difference.

I've seen incredibly imaginative young people find ways to bring pressure to bear amongst people in power. It's really extraordinary. And this will be it because my staff always stands up. You got to go. But I am the living evidence that you doing a little bit of something can change the world. And I always say this because there was this white guy sitting on a couch in Jersey in 1965, watching TV and just chilling out. I think it was a Sunday. And this was back when we only had three channels and they break away. The movie most Americans were watching that night was a movie called Judgment at Nuremberg. And suddenly he sees these black, he's not, these people on a bridge called the Edmund Pettus

Bridge being viciously beaten. And he's so disturbed by it. He's not these people on a bridge called the Edmund Pettus Bridge being viciously beaten. And he's so disturbed by it. He's like, I got to go to Alabama. And then he laughs at himself because he just started a business. He can't afford a ticket even to Alabama. So this guy does what is a great American tradition. He just thinks to himself, OK, I'm just going to do the best I can with what I have where I am. And he does a calculus in his mind and he thinks to himself, okay, I could spare one hour a week of pro bono work. And he does what I just advised you to do, calls around, back then he didn't have an internet, calls around to figure out who might need a one hour pro bono civil rights legal work. And he finds this young woman, she's now 93 years old, but this young, and she's still

head of the same organization, finds this woman who's head of the Fair Housing Council in Northern New Jersey. And she's like, hallelujah, Jesus, I need help because we don't know how to stop. They won't let Black people live in these neighborhoods. They keep showing up and they get steered away. And he goes, well, let's figure something out. And they designed this sting operation where they get volunteer white couples to volunteer to follow Black couples around. And so what happens is he goes, four years later, I get this case file of this Black family moving up from the South, getting turned away from house after house. He goes, we set up the sting. They fall in love with this house. They're told it's already sold. They leave. The white couple comes. The house is for sale. They put a bid on the house. couple doesn't show up. The lawyer does and the black guy and they confront the real estate agent. Real estate agent doesn't give up. He gets up and punches the lawyer in the face,

saves a Bilberman pincher on the black guy, all this kind of rigmarole. And next thing you know, that black family moves into this affluent all white town as the father would say that we are the four raisins in the tub of sweet vanilla ice cream. That family is my family. That's my story. Wow. That's how I got to where I grew up. And by 18 years old, I was a two-position high school All-American on my way to Stanford University on a full scholarship. And I would not be in the Senate office right now

if it wasn't for some white guy years before I was born deciding to give one hour a week of pro bono work. So don't tell me that your actions right now, if you're listening to this, can't make a difference. What you do, if it's righteous and for a cause of justice and peace and security or the highest of human virtues, love, it resonates, it reverberates, it goes out across space and time and makes a difference. You may not live to see it or even have the gift of knowing it, but it makes a difference. And now more than ever, we need that kind of radical love and consistency to say, I'm

going to give a little bit every day or every week or whatever you can do for the cause of my country. Fantastic. Wow. I'm inspired. Adam, what are we gonna do? We gotta do more than we do. I gotta do at least one hour a week.

I mean, this is crazy. That's an unbelievable story. Thank you so much. Incredible. You guys, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Senator Booker. Really appreciate it. Have a great evening and look forward to crossing paths again soon.

I hope to see you in LA. Yeah, for sure. I'm holding you to it. Trust me, man. We need to talk about America's broken food system and how Washington DC has created a system where only 2% of our ag subsidies go to the thing we tell people to eat the most of.

So I'm looking forward to that. 100%. And my staff is all here. They're all waving. There we go. Thanks. Hey, everybody. You got a lot of fans. Thanks for letting the Senator run long. We're just getting 15 minutes. We got almost 50 minutes. So you've been very generous. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks, you guys. Cheers. Bye-bye now. Thank you.