How to Convince the World of Bulls**t & Evil - Malcolm Gladwell

Talk to me about the history of the death penalty, fettered past that I didn't realize existed.

Oh, my goodness. In what country? In, in America. Yes. Um, well, uh, this is a subject we dig into in this new, uh, series we've done on re- revisionist history, the Alabama murders, and, you know, the, the history of the death penalty in the United States is not a... In other countries, there's a... The battle is essentially about whether you should have it or not and in America, the battle is really, uh, we'd like the states to have the right to do it, but they have to do it humanely. It's this absurd position where the, at issue is not the morality of the state taking someone's life. The issue is that the state should take someone's life in a manner that seems consistent with the values of America. So, there is this, you know, the, used to be the case, you know, it was the, it was the, way back when, it was w- we, we hung you publicly. Then we moved on from that and then was the firing squad which was considered to be more humane. And then they moved on from the firing squad and they went to the electric chair and then from the electric chair, um, they went to, uh, lethal injection and then from lethal injection, they have now gone on, uh, to, uh, uh, to, um, nitrogen gas, to asphyxiating you with nitrogen gas. So that-

I didn't know about the, I didn't know about the most recent, the iPhone 17 Pro Max that came out for-

This is the latest wrinkle, right. So they've been-

Okay.

... and each stage, the intention was, formally, the intention was to make the death more humane and, um, certain for the person being executed. But in fact, the intention was to make the process of execution more acceptable to the public.

Less gruesome.

So they're looking for the, for the way that, the form of executing somebody that, um, is easiest to watch. So you can imagine how hanging would be, uh, quite a spectacle, you know, disturbing. But you wouldn't take your child to a hanging. Um, y- you, uh, you know, the, uh, uh, execution by firing squad might be a little less dramatic. But certainly, the big jump was the electric chair was gruesome. I mean, somebody's whose brains were literally being fried in front of your eyes and their eyes were popping out and things. So that really was, that was up until the 1970s and the move to lethal injection was the idea was that we, um, can put people down the way we put down horses and that's really quite calm and it seem, appears at least to be kind of calm and humane and it's done by medical people and it's all very kind of, um... So that's, that's the kind of like, it's a very curious, peculiarly American approach to this subject.