Ep. #744: Malcolm Gladwell, Fareed Zakaria, Anand Giridharadas

Real Time with Bill Maher

Bill Maher opens with a monologue covering the White House AI summit, Trump's executive orders, military personnel changes under Pete Hegseth, and the Paramount-Warner merger. He interviews Malcolm Gladwell about his new book on

Key takeaways

• Malcolm Gladwell argues that assault rifle bans only regulate cosmetic attachments while handguns cause more mass shooting deaths, and homicide is concentrated among a tiny demographic of young men settling disputes.
• The AI summit at the White House resulted in voluntary guidelines rather than enforceable regulations, despite leaders like Sam Altman requesting government oversight to prevent a competitive race to the bottom.

Main topics

• AI regulation and safety
• Gun violence and homicide statistics

Notable quotes

More people in mass shootings, for example, die because of handguns than because of assault rifles.

Conclusion

The episode underscores the tension between rapid technological advancement and

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. Speaker 2 (0:47) Thank you so much. Speaker 2 (0:56) I appreciate that, Sam. Okay, once again, big story. Every week it seems AI, but it should be, right? It's scary shit. They had a summit. I thought I did this last week. They were at the UN, all the same guys. Now they're at the White House. This week, you know, the dude from Anthropic, the dude from NVIDIA, the dude from OpenAI, Meta, Google, SpaceX, Amazon. It was a full spectrum of people on the spectrum. Speaker 4 (1:22) Thank you. Speaker 2 (1:29) The good news, problem solved. Speaker 2 (1:33) you Speaker 2 (1:35) Yes, we're renaming it. It was called artificial intelligence. That's the problem. We were insulting it. Artificial. Trump says now it's super intelligence. Speaker 2 (1:47) What are we worrying about? This is like somebody saying, run for your life, it's Frankenstein. And you going, well, actually, the doctor's name is Frankenstein. Speaker 2 (1:56) The month... Speaker 2 (2:00) But you know Speaker 2 (2:04) The problem is that AI is what is propping up our economy, you know, in a lot of ways. We finally had a job support that was not good. It's amazing with all the shit that's going on. Economy hasn't tanked more than it has. Well, that may be over. You can see the panic already in a lot of people. The guys who work in crypto, now we're going to have to take on a second grift. Speaker 2 (2:33) Trump says he gives himself an A-plus on the economy. Speaker 2 (2:38) I'm not sure the voters agree, but we'll find out very soon in the election. But you know what? It's not the only issue. The economy. What about mosquitoes? Speaker 2 (2:50) Have you heard about that? I'm not making this up. Trump is going after the mosquitoes in Washington, D.C. He issued an executive order to drive the mosquitoes out of Washington, D.C. Speaker 2 (3:04) It's called winter. Speaker 2 (3:14) And it will count as one of the wars he's solved, you know, because he's solved many wars. Speaker 2 (3:22) He has. That's true. He has solved many wars. Now if he could just get out of the one that we're in. Yeah, we're in the one in Iran. But here's a little good news. Iraq. Remember Iraq? This week, our last troops finally pulled out. We pulled out of one. Hey! Speaker 2 (3:41) And, uh... Speaker 2 (3:43) Also... Good news that Iraq is more democratic than when we arrived there. The bad news is we're not. Speaker 2 (3:53) Thank you, sir. Speaker 2 (3:57) Now This I didn't see coming in the Iran war. Trump said this week that we attacked Iran also because they were manufacturing drugs. They were? Okay. Yeah, apparently what they were chanting was meth to America. Meth to America. Speaker 4 (4:14) I... Speaker 2 (4:15) Wow. Speaker 2 (4:21) No wonder Hezbollah had all those pagers. Speaker 2 (4:26) But it doesn't look like we're getting out anytime soon, because this week he is sending a third carrier to the Gulf with 2,000 new troops. And, by the way, not just any troops, because Pete Hegseth made a big speech this week, and he was talking about who's in the military now. You know, he did a lot of housecleaning there, okay? A lot of firing people, a lot of putting things in order. And now, and this is a quote he said, now in the military... No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Because that is the slogan you want in a military. Something that sounds like it was pulled directly off a grinder profile. Speaker 2 (5:07) Thank you. Speaker 2 (5:13) Wait, I always give credit where credit is due. It's not all bad. This month was Hispanic Heritage Month, and Trump had a ceremony there for it at the White House. It went very well. ICE only shot four people. Speaker 2 (5:32) And then he took the Hispanic delegation, whoever came there, I think Rubio was there too, on a... Speaker 2 (5:39) a tour of the ballroom construction site. And he said something that got a lot of press. He said, you know, it's still a hole in the ground. It's a construction site. And they were looking down, and he said, you know, be careful. Only a Hispanic could survive that fall. And Marco Rubio said, thanks? Speaker 2 (6:09) When he took the Hispanics to a job site, some people tried to say that was a racist thing, Hispanics at a job site. I think that's nothing. What may not be cool is that next month is Asian Heritage Month, and he's taking them to a nail salon. Speaker 2 (6:22) I see a red flag on that one. But hey, finally. Speaker 2 (6:29) Finally, big news for us. When I say us, I mean you people who are here every week with me. The merger went through. You know that? Paramount now owns Warner Discovery, which owns HBO, which owns my ass. Speaker 2 (6:45) So I am owned by who I don't know you know what whoever does whoever owns me now Don't believe what Trump is tweeting about me. Did you see what he said about me this weekend? He said my ratings are so low. It's just sad Speaker 2 (6:59) You know what, Mr. President? Your insults don't bother me. Make up whatever shit you want about me. Just don't mention I went to Cornell. Speaker 2 (7:13) He is the host of the Revictionist History Podcast and the best-selling author. His new book is The American Way of Killing, The Invention of an Epidemic. Malcolm Gladwell is finally here. Speaker 2 (7:31) Thank you so much for being here. Speaker 2 (7:34) So glad we finally got you here, and I'm so anxious to get into the book. I first want to ask you, you usually write about big social trends. I mean, I think I've read most of your books. The Tipping Point, you know, that was about a big idea that covers a lot of ground on a lot of things. Outliers with the 10,000 hours. Why, when you picked a specific topic, which I think is a departure for you, this book is about guns. Why of all the topics you could have picked, why guns? Speaker 1 (8:02) I mean, I've been... fascinated with this question of why America is so different from other peer countries around the world. Since I was a kid, I grew up in rural Ontario, and I would get my Time magazine in the mail every week, and I would read about this place which was 100 miles away, which had levels of violence that just were unthinkable to a Canadian. And I just didn't understand why. Because the countries look the same, they eat the same food, and they... watch the same TV and they worship the same God. And one place had four times the homicide rate of Canada. I didn't understand why. And I still don't. Speaker 2 (8:43) Even after writing the book, you don't. Well, I'm a Speaker 1 (8:44) little further along than I was before. I don't think there is a definitive answer. I think Speaker 2 (8:49) what you mean to say is if you read this book, you will know for sure. Speaker 1 (8:52) All right, I'll Speaker 2 (8:52) take the Speaker 1 (8:53) coaching, Speaker 2 (8:54) Bill. No, I mean, I think you shed a lot of light on it in a way I have not seen shed before. I mean, first of all, it's realistic. That's the first thing I loved about it, is that we have to be realistic. And I think a lot of the times we have not been about this issue. First of all, whatever it is, we're not going to get rid of guns in this country. We would have to confiscate them. That's just not going to happen. It's like a virus. It's here. How do we deal with it is the question. We can't get rid of it, correct? Speaker 1 (9:23) It's funny, when I talk to people who are doing homicide prevention for this book, it was striking to me how little they talked about gun control. Not because they're not in favor of it, they are, but just because they don't think it's going to happen in their lifetime. And if they wait around for it to happen, a lot of people are going to die in the interim. The conversation has got to move along from that issue. Speaker 2 (9:44) Well, gun control is a very vague, broad term. We do have some. gun control in this country. I bought a gun before and I had to go through a process. Different from state to state. I've also been in Alaska where it's like on the counter at the 7-Eleven. Speaker 2 (10:01) Because there's a moose on the street, walking down the street. You know, it's just a different... We're just a patchwork of very different states. But one thing you get into on the realistic tip is that... And I've said the same thing for years. We concentrate on the wrong type of guns. Assault weapons, yes, they're sexier and they're bigger and they look scarier. But that's not really where the problem is. Can you give us those stats? Speaker 1 (10:26) Yeah, I mean... I got the opening chapter of my book is all about how ludicrous assault rifle bans are because they don't ban assault rifles. They everyone pretends they do. But if you just read the bill, what they're really banning is the the number of cosmetic attachments you can buy on the Internet for your assault rifle. And Congress says you can't have these three cosmetic attachments. They don't do anything about the underlying problem. And they. Speaker 1 (10:54) At the end of the bill, there'll be an appendix, which is way longer than the bill, which lists all the rifles they're not banning. But also the fundamental problem is we have a problem with guns. And trying to kind of slice and dice and say this category is worse than this other category is foolishness. More people in mass shootings, for example, die because of handguns than because of assault rifles. Speaker 2 (11:17) Yeah, that's the point. Isn't most of the violence vice versa? It's handguns. Handguns. Yeah. which are very easy to get. I'm not even sure that what we call assault rifles, I mean, I certainly have seen a lot of debates about that, whether it is really an assault rifle. It's certainly not something I think of Speaker 1 (11:34) civilians Speaker 2 (11:34) need in a civilian society. I've also heard people say this is why I like it, because it's effective, because the AR-15 is a great gun. That's what the gun people will tell you. Speaker 1 (11:46) And Speaker 2 (11:46) I'm not against the Second Amendment. I'm not against having guns. Are you? Speaker 1 (11:51) I think, would I rather live in a world where we didn't have any guns? Yes. Well, I'd rather have ice cream in the mail, but you know. Do I, do I, do I think that we're... Speaker 1 (12:05) Do I think we're going to get there any time soon in the U.S.? No. Like I said, I think there are other much more pressing issues we can... But it is a leveler Speaker 2 (12:12) of sorts. Otherwise, it would just be the strongest, meanest people who always had the advantage. I mean, people who live in places where the police don't come quickly, women who can more easily be overpowered by men. It is a leveler of sorts. Speaker 1 (12:28) Well... You know, one of the points I make in the book is that when we talk about what our homicide problem is, we're talking about something quite specific. We're talking about young men who are using guns to settle arguments and disputes and feuds. Mostly young black men, correct? Well, I would say, I don't know whether the color of the skin is the important criteria here. I'm talking about... I'm just talking about the statistics. Speaker 1 (12:50) Well, I would say, I mean, Bill, now you're... This is one of those facts that leads the conversation astray. Because I don't... Or to the point. Well, no, I think that race is the wrong variable here. The right variable is young men, arguments, and guns. Those are the things that matter here. Young white men could just as easily get into the same trap if they're in environments... But Speaker 2 (13:18) the stats don't show that they do it in the same numbers across races. That's Speaker 1 (13:24) just a Speaker 2 (13:24) fact. Speaker 1 (13:26) Yes, homicide rates are higher among African Americans than they are among white Americans. Yes, that is... And you're right, young men. And it is, and we are talking about... It's Speaker 2 (13:34) a very small percentage of the population that does most of the... Speaker 1 (13:37) That's another kind of really important point that I think we overlook, which is when we talk about the criminal violence problem in this country... We're talking about a tiny percentage of the population. So there's a famous study by a criminologist in Chicago, Andrew Papachristos, who looked at the west side of Chicago, 50,000 people, and demonstrates that at any given time, the number of people who are at risk for either being shot or shooting someone in a community of 50,000 is 400. It's the size of an elementary school. Tiny, right? We're not talking about, when we talk about violence, we assume it's something that... has seeped into every corner of our community. This is not true. It is confined to a very narrow and specific subset of the population who tend to have almost a very similar profile, like I said, young men who are incapable of settling their arguments peaceably. Speaker 2 (14:32) Yeah. I mean, other countries have guns. We just use them. Right? Yeah. We have way more Speaker 1 (14:37) guns Speaker 2 (14:37) than Speaker 1 (14:37) most. Speaker 2 (14:38) Yeah. But, I mean, Canadians have guns. The Swiss? When I Speaker 1 (14:42) first came to this country as a 20-year-old, I was house-sitting, living in Indiana, and I was house-sitting for someone at work. I was in the guest bedroom,