Conversation with Gary Slutkin, physician and epidemiologist

Violence, in myriad forms, touches a quarter of humanity. Could it be cured like a disease?

To discuss this in my podcast, I am joined by Gary Slutkin, physician-epidemiologist and founder of Cure Violence Global. Gary’s new book makes a bold claim: violence spreads exactly like a contagious disease — in waves, in clusters, through exposure — and can be interrupted using the same methods that control epidemics like Covid or Ebola.

It sounds improbable. Yet his approach cut shootings by 67% in Chicago neighbourhoods within a year, with results replicated across cities in the US and Latin America. I test his thesis against the hardest cases: Congo, Haiti, Darfur/Sudan, Iran/US,  Ukraine/Russia Palestine-Israel — and what Dr Slutkin calls “authoritarian violence disorder.”

I began the conversation skeptical. I ended it wondering whether there is something very important in what Gary says. Have we been misdiagnosing and mistreating humanity’s oldest affliction all along — and whether, just possibly, there is a path out? If he is right, this is revolutionary and brings a ray of hope in the bleakness of unremitting violence and war.