Memorial Day, 2020 | Part 1

Five years ago the entire world watched Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd. What did we miss? Get ad-free episodes to Revisionist History by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin http://apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plus https://www.pushkin.fm/join-pushkin For more from Dr. Gary Klein, check out his Masterclass in Practical Decision Making https://www.shadowboxtraining.com/courses/masterclass-in-practical-decision-making/#:~:text=About%20this%20course&text=In%20this%20course%2C%20cognitive%20psychologist,conducted%20in%20real%2Dworld%20settings.. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. When you're a business owner interested in expanding to new markets, there's a lot to consider and countless questions to answer before making the call. The most important one being, are you ready? That's where ChatGPT comes in. Give it a goal, add your files, and ask Chat to help you map out different scenarios for the future of your business. So when growth is on the table, you've got an expansion plan ready to implement. Get started today at ChatGPT.com.

• 0:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over

• 1:21Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 2:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  May 25, 2020, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Early evening. A 911 dispatcher makes a call.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  3:30 as you described, it's the only available audio sector to cup food in Chicago. 3759 Chicago. On 38th, they are reporting that there's a person who used a counter that Phil at the business.

• 2:31Malcolm Gladwell?

  The dispatcher is Jenna Scurry, seven years on the job. She's in a big room with multiple computer screens and televisions running live video feeds from around the city. The details from the call come over her screen. 38th and Chicago. Suspect at a grocery store.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Suspect is a black male, six foot four taller, sitting on the hood of a Bloomberg Mercedes. License plate 4 Robert John Zero Two Six. Box number six. Box number six.

• 3:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  She sends a squad car to the scene, looks up, and realizes the city has a fixed camera on that corner of 38th and Chicago, so she has a live video feed up on one of the screens. She sees the officers try to put the suspect in the back of one of the squad cars. She looks away. When she looks back, he's on the ground, handcuffed, face down. One officer kneeling on his neck. The suspect is George Floyd. The officer on top of him is Derek Chauvin. She looks away again, takes another call. At the criminal trial the following year, arising

• 3:43Malcolm Gladwell?

  from the events that day in 2020, Scurry was the first witness called by the prosecution. And she relived the events of that evening, step by step.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  At some point then, did you go back to this? How did it appear at that time when you went back to it?

• 4:01Speaker 04

  It had not changed.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  And what do you mean by that?

• 4:03Speaker 04

  They were still on the ground. The whole situation was still on the scene.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  Do you recall approximately how long that was?

• 4:11Speaker 04

  No. It was long enough. It was long enough that I could look back multiple times.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  And so when you did look back, still on the ground, like depicted here essentially?

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  And?

• 4:29Speaker 03

  What did you think about this when you look back and saw that it hadn't changed?

• 4:34Speaker 04

  I first asked if the screen had frozen.

• 4:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  My name is Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. I'm guessing you watched the bystander videos of what happened that night during the fevered COVID summer of 2020. I know I did. I knew the villain, I knew the victim. I thought that's all I needed to know. But then I ran across the George Floyd video again, not long ago, by chance, one of those serendipitous internet moments, and watched it for the first time in years, far from the intense emotions of the first time I saw it. And I realized, I didn't understand what was happening, what Chauvin was doing, what the other police officers on the scene were thinking.

• 5:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  Which made me wonder if somehow, the first time around, I had missed the lesson of the case. So over the next two episodes, I'm going to do a close reading of what happened to George Floyd, an unfamiliar reading, starting with the perspective of the very first person to see things unfold in real time, Jenna Scurry. Because before George Floyd stopped breathing, before the angry crowd gathered, before the scene turned into tragedy, she could see Derek Chauvin behaving so strangely that it led her, a 911 dispatcher who had seen a thousand crime scenes in her career, to stop and stare at the video feed

• 6:10Malcolm Gladwell?

  in disbelief. As in, "This can't be real. The screen must be frozen."

• 6:21Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 6:59Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over-the-limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do,

• 7:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  my daily cash can grow automatically over time without any extra effort. When you better understand your spending habits, it's easier to make your money work harder for you. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.74% to 27.99% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of October 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member FDIC.

• 8:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  Terms and more at applecard.com. The new Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats turns everyday meals into meaningful health insights, helping you identify changes in your cat's habits and be more proactive about their health. My cat, Biggie Smalls, is the most demanding member of our household. He has specific mealtimes, or he lets out a massive howl. And last night, I introduced him to the Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats. It took no time to set up. I downloaded the app, plugged it in, filled up the feeder with delicious kibble, and watched as my cat entered the digital age. Biggie, look. All curious at it. It's his first experience with high technology.

• 9:10Malcolm Gladwell?

  Tiny, feline mind, blown. Check in on mealtime with a real-time video feed and dispense food on demand even when you're away. In multi-cat households, the Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats uses facial recognition technology to track up to five cats. Visit petivity.com/catfeeder to learn more.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  Did you find that it had frozen?

• 9:41Speaker 04

  No.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  How did you?

• 9:42Speaker 04

  Well, I was told that it was not frozen.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Did you see the screen change yourself?

• 9:46Speaker 04

  Yes, I saw the person's moving.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  So what did you start thinking at that point?

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Something might be wrong.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Wrong with what? What are you thinking?

• 9:56Speaker 04

  It was a gut instinct of... in the instant, something's not going right. Whether it be they needed more assistance or if there were... there just something wasn't right. I don't know how to explain it. It was a gut instinct to tell me that now we can be concerned.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  And what did you decide to do?

• 10:22Speaker 04

  I took that instinct and I called the sergeant.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Have you ever, in your career before, called a sergeant for something like this?

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Multiple. For an incident like this, to be exact, no.

• 10:36Malcolm Gladwell?

  In the beginning, there was nothing extraordinary about the situation unfolding on the corner of 38th and Chicago. A man passes a counterfeit $20 bill. The clerk calls 911. The suspect hasn't run. He's sitting in his car across the street. He isn't armed. He isn't hostile. He seems like he's high. Two officers approach him and tell him to get out of the car. He pleads and complains, more like a scared child than a grown man. He talks about his mom. He finally gets out. The officers handcuff him. They ask him his name. He says it's George Floyd. They lead him over to the squad car. But he doesn't want to get in the backseat. He says he's claustrophobic.

• 11:20Malcolm Gladwell?

  He's having trouble breathing. He struggles and squirms, and because he's a big man, well over 6 feet and 200 pounds, it makes things difficult. In the struggle, he cuts his mouth. One of the officers calls for an ambulance. A second squad car arrives. There are now four police officers on the scene and one handcuffed suspect. Clearly unhappy, but deferential. We know from the body cam footage that by this point, he has used the words "sorry" and "please" 57 times.

• 11:54Speaker 05

  Leave, man. Leave this.

• 11:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's Floyd.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  Do you want to jail us?

• 12:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  Is he going to jail? That's Derek Chauvin. He's one of the two officers in the second squad car that just pulled up.

• 12:08Speaker 06

  He's under arrest right now for forgery.

• 12:10Speaker 05

  I can't.

• 12:11Speaker 06

  So we'll figure out what's going on.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Forgery for what? Take him out and just... For what? Leave me. I can't fucking breathe.

• 12:17Speaker 06

  Here, come on out.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  Thank you. Get him on the ground. Ah! Yeah, just...

• 12:22Speaker 06

  On the ground.

• 12:23Malcolm Gladwell?

  Get him on the ground, Chauvin says. As the senior officer present, he's taking control of the situation. He wants Floyd in the prone position, face down, hands cuffed behind his back. He then puts one of his knees on the side of Floyd's neck and the other between Floyd's shoulder blades. A technique sometimes used with non-compliant subjects.

• 12:48Speaker 05

  Ah! Ah! I can't breathe, man. Please. Please let me stand.

• 12:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  Chauvin says, "We'll hold him until the ambulance shows up." Floyd says, "Let me stand." Chauvin says, "No." So what does Chauvin do next? Chauvin doesn't move. Chauvin just sits there. He's frozen.

• 13:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  Right around this time, an off-duty firefighter named Genevieve Hansen was out for a walk, happens upon the scene, identifies herself as a firefighter, a trained first responder.

• 13:29Speaker 07

  I was pretty focused on trying to get the officers to let me help.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  And how were you doing that? Trying to get the officers to focus on you and get help?

• 13:42Speaker 07

  I think, in my memory, I tried different tactics of calm and reasoning. I tried to be assertive.

• 13:56Speaker 07

  I pled and was desperate.

• 14:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  Hansen testified at Chauvin's trial.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  In terms of, you know, his face when you're first there, or even the rest of him, what is it that you saw that made you concerned about his medical needs?

• 14:15Speaker 07

  I was really concerned about, I thought his face looked puffy and swollen, which would happen if you were putting a grown man's weight on someone's neck. I noticed some fluid coming from what looked like George Floyd's body. And in a lot of cases, we see a patient release their bladder when they die. I can't tell you exactly where the fluid was coming from, but that's where my mind went.

• 14:52Speaker 07

  He wasn't moving. He was being restrained, but he wasn't moving.

• 15:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  Later at the trial, a police surgeon named Bill Smack walked the jury through the videotape of Floyd's final moments, pointing out all the mounting warning signs.

• 15:10Speaker 06

  What I want you to also watch for is what is his right arm doing as this progresses? You will see him pushing against the tire. You'll see his right arm, his elbow, pushing against. Yes, I'd like to know what is it showing us? Why is that significant? This is very important because it's showing what Mr. Floyd is doing to try and breathe, to get his rights out of his chest up off of the pavement so that he can bring in air.

• 15:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  Smack breaks down Floyd's final minutes, frame by frame.

• 15:44Speaker 06

  Let's look at another segment. Brendan, if we can go to start at 2021. You will hear his voice get weaker and weaker. You will see his lose facial expression. You will hear him make sounds of trying to breathe as we get closer. He then goes unconscious. You will then see in the next section, he has what's called an anoxic seizure. That's a fancy word for his brain is going without oxygen, very low. His legs shake, but you're

• 16:25Speaker 06

  also, you will actually see and you can hear the handcuff shake, and you'll see the body camera shake when he has an anoxic seizure further on down the line.

• 16:38Malcolm Gladwell?

  Clear warning signs, clear red flags, not to mention Genevieve Henson and other bystanders are just a few feet away, shouting at him to get off Floyd. And then, another voice joins that chorus. It's one of the other officers. He says, "Should we roll him on his side?"

• 16:59Malcolm Gladwell?

  Rolling him on his side is what's known as the recovery position. Having someone prone on the hard ground with their hands cuffed and with a knee on their neck and in the middle of their back was acceptable practice in Minneapolis at the time. But the city's use of force training explicitly stated the technique was only supposed to be used briefly and on someone "exhibiting active aggression." It's dangerous. It's hard to breathe. I tried it. I had a friend put me in that position. It's scary. So when the subject calms down, you're supposed to roll them over. That's what the fellow officer is saying. We have to roll them over. But Chauvin says, no.

• 17:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  He says, that's why we've got the ambulance coming. He's not reacting to anything. This is what so alarms Jenna Scurry when she looks back up at the scene. She's expecting things to have resolved themselves. Things should have happened. But nothing's happened. All she sees is Chauvin up on the screen, sitting on Floyd's neck, his hand casually in his pocket, his face impassive. He's frozen. Or, to use a term favored by psychologists, he's fixated.

• 18:14Speaker 05

  Fixation is simply going down the wrong path and getting stuck on that path.

• 18:22Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's Gary Klein. He consults with governments, armies, and hospitals on how to make better decisions under pressure and wrote the classic Sources of Power, one of my favorite books ever. For Klein, one of the most revealing case studies in fixation was the actions of the Israeli intelligence chief, Eli Zera, in the weeks leading up to the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel in 1973.

• 18:47Speaker 05

  He had what was now called in Israel a conception. His conception was Egypt will never attack us until they have air superiority. And they don't have air superiority, and we have nothing to worry about. And he held on to that belief until about two hours before the attack. But his subordinates were seeing all these counter indicators. They're seeing the Egyptians moving troops and changing configurations at the border. All these signs that indicate an attack is imminent. And Zara said, this is just a training exercise. But then the subordinates showed there was no sign of training going on. So this was just a cover story.

• 19:32Speaker 05

  And Zara refused to pass their concerns on higher. And then the attack occurred. So he was fixated and he wouldn't budge.

• 19:44Malcolm Gladwell?

  The fixated decision maker cannot accept new information. Every time new information arises that challenges his original conception, he explains it away. Klein once did a big project at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, looking at how physicians made diagnoses. And he found that the most experienced doctors were acutely aware of their own tendency towards fixation. It was a constant battle.

• 20:09Speaker 05

  I watched one examination where the attending physician, this is the first observation I made. The attending physician is examining the person, the person's describing his condition. And seems pretty straightforward. And at a certain point, he says, what's this on your back? Well, it turned out he had had surgery for to repair some heart defect. This hadn't been in his history. And the physician said, wait a minute, let's start over. And he started the whole exam over because he was aware that there might have been implications in what he did

• 20:51Speaker 05

  that he didn't see because he didn't have this other possibility.

• 20:56Malcolm Gladwell?

  Did he end up changing his diagnosis?

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Oh, yes. Yes, they found a much more serious problem that the resident and some of the nurses had missed.

• 21:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  Fighting fixation means being willing to throw away all the work you've done in making sense of a complicated situation, and saying, "Let's start over." This is what Chauvin doesn't do. He never says to himself, "Let's start over."

• 21:25Speaker 05

  Derek Chauvin, he had a script for how to handle people who were larger and intimidating, and that's as far as he ever got.

• 21:35Malcolm Gladwell?

  Hmm, hmm. You can't be... Is it fair to say you can't be a police officer if you're not willing to revisit your script?

• 21:43Speaker 05

  You can't be an effective police officer if you are stuck on your script.

• 21:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  Floyd is trying to raise his chest off the ground? Oh, that's because he's still resisting arrest. Some lady says she's a firefighter. Is she really? In fact, when Genevieve Hanson moves closer, Chauvin goes for his mace. Floyd's voice starts to falter. About time. Maybe he's finally going to stop complaining. One of his fellow officers says, "Put him in the recovery position." Dude, I've been doing this for 19 years. Back off. The crowd that has gathered around Floyd and the four officers is becoming more and more vocal. But Chauvin isn't moving. He's not responsive right now, bro. No, bro, look at him.

• 22:33Malcolm Gladwell?

  He's not responsive right now, bro. Bro, are you serious? He's not doing anything with that on his head, bro. Is he breathing right now? Check his pulse. Check his pulse. Check his pulse, pal.

• 22:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  Check his pulse. Check his pulse. One of the other cops at the scene says to the officer sitting behind Chauvin, "I can't find one." Floyd is dead. And still, Chauvin doesn't move. He will remain on Floyd's neck for another three minutes, even after the ambulance arrives.

• 23:16Malcolm Gladwell?

  Years from now, when university professors teach courses on decision sciences, they will play this video as a textbook example of fixation. But why is Chauvin fixated? What psychological mechanism could describe why he would just sit there? In the aftermath of the murder, it was said again and again that Chauvin is a racist. But calling someone racist is a description, not an explanation. Why is Chauvin stuck on his script?

• 23:59Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 24:36Malcolm Gladwell?

  The new Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats turns everyday meals into meaningful health insights, helping you identify changes in your cat's habits and be more proactive about their health. My cat, Biggie Smalls, is the most demanding member of our household. He has specific mealtimes, or he lets out a massive howl. Last night, I introduced him to the Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats. It took no time to set up. I downloaded the app, plugged it in, filled up the feeder with delicious kibble, and watched as my cat entered the digital age. Biggie, look. All curious at it, his first experience with high technology.

• 25:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  Tiny feline mind, blown. Check in on mealtime with a real time video feed and dispense food on demand even when you're away. In multi-cat households, the Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats uses facial recognition technology to track up to five cats. Visit P E T I V I T Y dot com slash cat feeder to learn more. This show is brought to you by BetterHelp. I have a question. When you wake up at three in the morning and start stewing over something that happened in your life, or some problem you're mulling over, what is that thing? What's that annoying, troublesome stone in your shoe that you just can't get rid of?

• 26:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  Well, the truth is that you really can get rid of those experiences that haunt us, but you need help, and that's where BetterHelp comes in. BetterHelp therapists are licensed, experienced professionals, such as psychologists, marriage and family therapists, social workers and counselors. They have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience and have the required education, training, exams, and practice. BetterHelp is now in network with more than 125 health plans, with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com slash Gladwell.

• 26:47Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's better H E L P dot com slash Gladwell. One of the most influential ideas to emerge in social psychology in recent years is something called hostile intention attribution, a theory arising out of the work of Ken Dodge.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  For me, a very poignant event in my own thinking was that as a clinical psychologist, I was seeing a highly aggressive teenager in a state psychiatric hospital.

• 27:20Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's Dodge, who teaches at Duke University.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  And the boy's name was Rocky. I came up to his ward one day, approached him from behind to say hello, was trying to establish a relationship with him, touched him on the shoulder from behind, and he turned around and punched me in the gut.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  And in a nanosecond, he stopped and said, "Oh my, you can't be too careful around here." And, you know, he was making a decision that, in that moment, that somebody touching him on the back shoulder might be a threat. And he responded. That was his mindset.

• 28:03Malcolm Gladwell?

  Rocky could have interpreted that touch on the shoulder in any number of ways. He could have ignored it, shrugged it off, or assumed it was an invitation for affection and turned and smiled. But he didn't. He chose to focus on it and to assume that Dodge had a hostile intent. That's hostile intent attribution, the pattern of interpreting everything as a threat. You can look at someone like that kid Rocky and offer an organic explanation of his behavior. He's a bad seed. He's wired wrong. But Dodge wants us to look at problematic behavior as a developmental problem as well.

• 28:45Malcolm Gladwell?

  Somewhere along the way, someone's personal experience left them unprepared to make proper sense of the world. A very small child, for example, does not understand the distinction between an intentional act and an accident. That's something you learn. You gradually figure out that actions can come with any number of different explanations.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  I remember going to the pediatrician at age four and being deathly afraid of getting shot, right? But my parents and everybody certainly quickly told me that doctor was not trying to be mean to me, right? And I had to learn that. But I do think that it's a socialization of benign intent that early life is about, rather than the socialization of hostile intent.

• 29:33Malcolm Gladwell?

  After talking to Dodge, I began to observe my own kids more closely. They're both preschoolers, two years apart. The big one loves to manhandle her little sister, and most of the time, that interaction is greeted with laughter. But sometimes, if my eldest goes too far, her sister cries. And I realized that what they are doing is, to use Dodge's phrase, "learning how to make accurate attributions of each other's behavior." When the big sister's push is too aggressive, the little one learns that seems to have a different intention from what we were doing before. She's learning the difference between fighting and playing. And when the little one cries out instead of laughing, the big one learns, "Oh, if I want to keep playing,

• 30:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  I have to make sure that my actions are accurately interpreted." She's learning how to rein in her aggression. That kind of feedback loop is a crucial part of a child's socialization. But in the case of the boy Rocky, what Dodge realized was that that process of socialization, of learning how to accurately distinguish between a hostile touch and a playful touch, had been disrupted.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  I remember interviewing a 10-year-old kid who told me about when he was four or five, the family that he lived in at that time. His father, stepfather, would come home every night from work, and he learned how to minimize the likelihood that he was going to get beaten up that night by smelling whether his father had alcohol in his breath, whether his father had a mean look, whether his father called him into the kitchen with his belt already undone, put it on the kitchen table. He was learning all— He's four years old, and he's learning all these signals. And he could describe them to me in great detail.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  So I think an early life of threat, personal, physical threat—there may be others as well—is one way that it would be very adaptive to develop a defensive mindset and to assume a hostile intent from another person.

• 31:43Malcolm Gladwell?

  If your father is violent 60% of the time and loving 40% of the time, and you can't tell in the moment which direction he's going to go, then it makes logical sense for your own physical safety just to assume that your father is always going to be hostile. But when you take that assumption into the real world, onto playgrounds, into classrooms, into the workplace, it doesn't work. It makes you a bully, a pariah. It makes even routine interactions deeply problematic. And nowhere is this dysfunction more problematic than policing, of course. Because if you are a police officer whose early life and experience has left them impaired in that way,

• 32:28Malcolm Gladwell?

  who as a result makes hostile attributions all the time, then how can you be a police officer? I don't know what Chauvin's upbringing was like, but I know when I saw the tape again after talking to Dodge, I wondered if Chauvin wasn't just someone like Rocky, all grown up. And the one thing Rocky can't be is a police officer. Because being good at that job relies, maybe more than almost any other profession, on being able to distinguish in the heat of a moment between a hostile act and an ambiguous act. Between someone who is struggling because they can't breathe and someone who is struggling because they are resisting arrest. Between someone who says, "I'm going to die

• 33:12Malcolm Gladwell?

  because they're trying to trick you", and someone who says, "I'm going to die because they are in fact going to die". If you can't do that, then you can only interpret the world one way. Then, in the middle of a fast-evolving situation, when there is new information coming in all the time, you have only one way to interpret it: a threat.

• 33:38Malcolm Gladwell?

  In the course of the investigation into the death of George Floyd, a second case came to light. It happened in 2017. Three years earlier, a woman calls 911. She says her son has assaulted her. The police arrive, talk to the woman at length. She says her son is down the hall in his room. In the body cam footage, you can see the officers walk down the hallway. The boy is on the floor of his bedroom on the phone. He's 14. The lead officer in the group is lean, in his 40s, with a passive demeanor. It's Derek Chauvin.

• 34:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  The officers enter the room, tell him he's under arrest. He says his mom was drunk. He gets up reluctantly. His voice is calm. He doesn't act out. He's not aggressive. He says his mother had done this before, called the police when she's the one who has a problem. That's why his uncle left the house, he says. He seems genuinely confused as to why he should be the one under arrest. He's a teenager.

• 34:44Speaker 03

  John, why don't you come on here?

• 34:45Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's Chauvin.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Why don't you stand up for me?

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Oh, you're under arrest, so stand up. I'm not under arrest. Yeah, you are. Stand up. My mom is drunk. You can call her brother. Stand up. She assaulted me. Stand up. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna ask you any more time. You can't arrest me. Stand up. Ask my sister. Stand up. I'm not gonna ask you again. You can't touch me in my own house. Stand up. You can't touch me in my own house. Get up now.

• 35:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  Chauvin moves towards him, starts beating the boy over the head with his flashlight, opening a wound over his ear that will require stitches, puts him in a chokehold, throws him to the ground. And then, things go from bad to much, much worse.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  Get on, get on your stomach now. No, get on, I'm explaining to y'all. What'd I say? Put that fucking back now! I'm explaining to y'all. Ow!

• 35:49Speaker 03

  You're hurting me! You're hurting me! I'm not hurting me!

• 36:10Malcolm Gladwell?

  Then his mother enters the room.

• 36:23Malcolm Gladwell?

  Chauvin crouches down next to the prone boy and puts his knee on the boy's neck. Then, he just sits there. There are at least six officers at the scene. At this point, most of them have filed out of the room as if they can't stomach what's happening. One of the remaining officers turns his body cam to the wall. Chauvin keeps his knee on the boy's neck for 15 minutes. Even after the paramedics arrive and the boy explains to them that he blacked out after he was choked and that his ear is bleeding, Chauvin remains on the boy's neck, frozen.

• 37:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  The boy is eventually rescued and he's finally able to get up and walk away.

• 37:15Malcolm Gladwell?

  I have watched that body cam footage more times than I can count, and every time I find myself crying at the end, in a way that I never did with George Floyd. Not because it's worse than George Floyd, because of course it isn't, but because it's about a boy, and it was all recorded on tape years before it happened again. A former US attorney named Amanda Surtich examined the video while prosecuting Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  I would say the two most striking things about what's depicted in the 2017 video are, first, that the minor doesn't act out in any physical way whatsoever. The other striking thing about the video that I think is much more visceral is how obvious it is that it's a child being assaulted, and when former Officer Chauvin has that really strong strike on his head with the flashlight.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  There is that pause that any parent who has a kid will recognize right after a kid gets really hurt. And then the minor says, "Al, you're hurting me," and begins to cry and sounds very much like the child that he is. And he continues to cry in the same way over 15 minutes intermittently.

• 38:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  There's another reason I found that tape so heartbreaking. Something that I did not expect myself to feel and something I cannot entirely explain. I felt an overwhelming wave of pity for Derek Chauvin, a man who sees every action as a threat, who cannot tell the difference between fear and aggression, who looks at a boy on his phone in his bedroom and sees a monster. That is a dark, joyless place for anyone to find themselves imprisoned. And by what tragic failure of administration did a man who showed on videotape that he

• 39:31Malcolm Gladwell?

  cannot do the single most important thing that a police officer needs to do to be a police officer remain on the force for three more years until he killed someone in cold blood? That's next week.

• 40:05Malcolm Gladwell?

  Revisionist History is produced by Nina Bird Lawrence, Lucy Sullivan, and Ben Nadaf Haferi. Our editor is Karen Shakurji. Fact checking by Sam Rusak. Engineering Nina Bird Lawrence. Mixing and mastering on this episode by Jake Gorski. Production support from Luke Lamond. Thank you to Mikhail Libowich. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix. And al-Hafay, Greta Cohn. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.

• 40:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  Get ad-free episodes of Revisionist History by subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.

• 41:03Malcolm Gladwell?

  Wait, I came in for two things.

• 41:06Speaker 04

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• 41:32Malcolm Gladwell?

  For I don't know how long, maybe 12, 13 years, I've worn a Whoop band on my wrist. I started doing it because I met the founder of Whoop at a conference. He heard that I was a runner and he said, oh, you'll love this. It's perfect for athletes. And he was right. I've worn one ever since. Every time I work out, I see how hard I worked, how long I need to recover. I wake up in the morning and I get a complete picture of how my sleep went, which helps me understand the kinds of things that lead to a bad night and the kinds of things that lead to a good night. It's sleek, long-lasting battery, and now with AI looking at all my numbers and coaching me. Whoop is a winner. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership.

• 42:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's whoop.com for your free month of Whoop.

• 42:21Speaker 04

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