Episode 1

Episode 1. - Intro to Mass Violence

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In this introductory episode, Nolan and Jacob explain their motivations for starting this podcast, their experience with mass violence and the resources they will be sharing throughout the season. 

Released: 6/23/22

Transcription: 

Hey everyone. Welcome to tomorrow's problem podcast. That's right. My name is Nolan and my name is Jake and, we are the hosts and, we are really excited to introduce you to the nature of our podcast. That's right. For different motivations. All that wonderful stuff. That's right. This is a podcast focusing on mass violence, particularly school shootings, because that's kind of something.

No, and I have been looking into the last few years mm-hmm and of course, something that is on the public consciousness. At all times. Definitely. So yeah, we're really excited to get started. One thing that Noah and I kind of bring to the table is that we have some contacts,  some experts as we call them in the field of mass violence.

Mm-hmm security, school security, school safety, that's all that stuffs. And,  we, this is actually our second recording. Our first recording was with. Jimmy dun levy, who has,  a lot of experience and critical response. He was a Lieutenant with the, Pennsylvania state troopers. And so after this episode, you can listen to that one right away.

Yeah. Jump right into it. That's right. Yeah. Speaking of jumping right into it. Let's do just that. Yeah. So I'll do a, we'll do a quick introduction of ourselves. So as I said, my name's Nolan Foley I've. You know, for the past couple years I've been studying a lot of psychology, behavioral sciences, neurology.

So I, I really just kind of love human development, how humans get to where they are. Like, it's just, it's so fascinating. And so, especially with like school shooters, perpetrators, um, different, you know, even domestic terrorist, it's just so interesting to see how that process goes. And so as we're kind of jumping into future podcasts, I feel like I'm gonna try and always give that little edge.

There you go. Speaking of human development, Nolan, the human is like seven feet tall. He has developed for so long. . I can't stop. He can't stop. My . My name is,  Jacob Lasswell, I'm a student of journalism. I'm a big fan of true crime had been for a while. So this is, really exciting for me to talk about mm-hmm so I, my, no one can kind of deliver some of the really technical, side of this, so I can kind of.

Just kind of tell you the names, I guess. Yeah. , no more than that. Yeah. No more, definitely more than that. Jacob makes awesome, like correlations. I feel like you're really good at that and kind of connecting a lot of those dots. So that's right. Also a fun fact, Jacob and I have known each other for like that's right.

Not 20 years, 20 years when I was like six or seven I'm 27. Holy cow. Yeah. Yeah. That's man. You're like the other than my family. Like you're the person I've known longest. And I mean, we can cut this out, but no one, no one for the record. No one's crying right now. oh man, just a disclosure. This is a pretty graphic podcast.

I know not pretty graphic podcast, but the nature of what we talk about is mm-hmm by nature, pretty graphic. Yeah. Pretty violent. Um, we are gonna be respectful of obviously the victims mm-hmm and the subject matter, but it is gonna be probably violent and disturbing. Yeah. Yeah. Psychologically disturbing, just a, like very.

Jarring stuff that, you know, we've, we've all heard about it, but you know, to kind of dive into it deeper, it can be a little overwhelming. And so we wanna make sure that you guys are aware of that. Yeah. And we'll keep things light. We'll,  try to pepper in some humor. Mm-hmm little, add a little levity.

You know, because,  it is kind of hard to talk about this all day mm-hmm , you know, definitely. So one thing we wanted to talk about is our motivations and, kind of the, you know, the, the point of this podcast and. First and foremost, we really wanted to talk about the solutions that are coming out of the, the security industry, the safety industry that's right.

Um, how we're protecting our children. That's right. And,  the, the reason for that is because there's a lot of hopelessness. There's a lot of, kind of just, this is happening. It's happens again and again, mm-hmm well, where is the hope? Yeah. Where's the hope, where's the end of this, you know, where's the light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah. And we really want to give that kind of perspective yeah. To counter counterweight the negativity and kind of. And like we said earlier, Nolan, and I see people, you know, in our professional sphere that are working every day to solve this. And that's why we wanna highlight these people and bring 'em in.

They can share their expertise. And we wanna share this with you because the more you guys know,  the safer our country's gonna be. Definitely, hopefully, definitely. That's, that's kind of. . Yeah. Do we really want to, kind of educate on leakage or warning signs, indications that, proceed a violent event, both in the perpetrator and kind of the school community.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So those are really gonna be kind of the driving forces behind the podcast. I feel like we'll touch a lot on different solutions. Um, like Jacob said, like the warning signs, different indicators. Yeah. When most true crime podcasts, it's very much focused on the story and the outcome of the,  the victims and the perpetrators.

We really will be tying it all back into. Um, solutions. Yeah. And what breaking down different elements of mass violence and what we're doing to solve it. Exactly. Yeah. So, so growing up there, there was a lot of different shootings events that occurred while I was in high school while Jacob was in high school.

Yeah. And, that, that was always kind of in the back of everyone's mind. Just growing, growing up in American schools, like the American school system. And, when Jacob and I were talking about this podcast, one thing that I remembered vividly is when I was, I, I went to school in Virginia Little school out in Williamsburg, and that was right around the time of Virginia tech.

It was 2007, you know, I was a freshman and you know, the, the school shut down, everything happened. And we, we, we heard about it from our teachers. And it was so, you know, terrible that they thought it was like a terrorist attack. That's right. They had no idea what was happening. So they just shut down all this, like most of the schools in Virginia.

Yeah. And, that always has stuck with me. Um, I've always been really fascinated is almost too much of a morbid word, but just really, really kind of perplexed at what happened with Sangwe Cho Virginia tech. You know, what fell through the cracks. There was a lot of warning signs, a lot of leakage, but. You know, never really action on that.

That's right. And all, I we're both able to live overseas, in our youth and kind of see America from an outside point of view. And it really is,  its own brand of violence here in America. this mass bonds problem we have. Oh yeah. And,  it's, I think it's kind of brought both of us to the realization that, um, there needs to be a solution now mm-hmm , it's not a, oh, this is a mental health problem.

It's a gun problem. It will solve itself once we solve those problems. No, this that doesn't account for the shooting. That's gonna happen this next week. Mm-hmm no, this is not tomorrow's problem. That's right. anyway. So some of the goals we have for this podcast is, , one thing is we really want to raise awareness.

We want to kind of analyze the different, um, kind of layers of, of security and safety. We wanna. You know, bring to attention, um, kind of the champions of safety,  like, like we mentioned earlier, we're gonna have these, these, um, subject matter experts, that's honestly, in their field, in their respective fields.

And, and I, we hope that really raises awareness. And one thing, you'll come to learn is that these are very multifaceted.  events, there are a lot of different layers, like you said, that go in, , to these events. So it's accordingly gonna need a multi-layered solution. Yeah, definitely. Another part of that is just education.

We really want to kind of. teach. Yeah. Um, as we go along about the kind of the world of school security, there's gonna be a lot of terminology that we use that might be new. Yeah. Um, talking about response or, you know, emergency operations plans. We're gonna, you know, it's not too, you know, crazy or overwhelming, but it will be something that we feel that you'll be able to learn from.

Yeah, we definitely hope so.

So, originally we wanted to do this first episode about Ethan crumbly and the, Oxford shooting that happened feels like a month ago, but it was actually the end of November, 2021 blows my mind. And that's how quickly these events happen every week. It feels like, feels like there's a new one. And so, , after the shooting in yal, We decide we really need to jump in here and get this podcast started.

And so we're gonna kind of touch on yal day,  very briefly and just kind of give her an overview. And,  if you wanna listen to the next episode, Jimmy dun levy has a lot of really good insights about the, the lack of response at yal day, but we won't go into that here. Yeah. And so one thing we really want to do on this podcast is talk about things that may not get,  picked up in the news cycle.

Cuz there is a lot of speculation that happens in the news with, school shootings. And we kind of want to bring a little more context kind of. Show light to some of the finer details. So you can have a better idea about how these things play out. And so with UAL, yeah, there are some misconceptions mm-hmm , there are some things that we still don't know about.

And,  I think the one thing that everyone is concerned about is the response of the police directly after the incident and also the response to the police in their press releases mm-hmm and there's been some really interesting things, , commentary surrounding the shooting. Oh, definitely. I mean, there was just, there was even a recent news article.

That was just about how,  the door might not have even been locked. That's right. So just it's, it's an ongoing process. And we, we wanted to kind of leave this first episode with a little quote, um, and it, it was about the Aldi shooting. Um, a local religious religious leader. Um, he, he mentioned that, you know, there wasn't a mass murder, it was 21 murders.

And I think our society, I think that we've, we've slowly kind of just been O overwhelmed and desensitized. Yeah. Desensitized. We're just emotionally exhausted. Yeah. And we've kind of just started clumping things and yeah, we see these victims as groups.  not individuals, not individuals. And we tried to, and it might happen for like a.

But really the people who are left with that pain is, is the families that's right. Communities' and we really want to focus on that. Mm-hmm on the individuality of it, of all of, all of it, right. The perpetrator victim, all of it. And,  I feel like if that happens will be able to address the problem that's right.

Because these perpetrators started out as babies too. Mm-hmm so we really want to figure out what happens between the time of birth and the time of. their eventual shooting or slaying. Yeah. What happened? So that what brought someone to this depth? Yeah. How can we come together and, and support everyone?

That's right. Okay. So that is kind of a review of, of everything that we want to talk about in these future podcast. We're gonna have different seasons that focus on different, um, you know, international threats, um, international,  shootings, or kind of mass violent, mass violence events. And, you know, there's gonna be a lot of, lot of lot that goes into this.

And, we'll kind of. we'll also set up different episodes before our, guest speakers to kind of prepare you for maybe terminology that they're gonna use, for the kind of industry that they might be working in. That's right. And yeah, this is gonna be really, hopefully it's gonna be really enlightening that that's right.

And a hopeful kind of podcast. That's where, yeah, we don't want this to be a doomy gloomy. Mm-hmm everyone's gonna die podcast. No, because there are people out there working hard. Get things going in the right direction. We don't wanna spread like kind of fear. You know, we don't wanna be fear mongering or anything like that.

So we really hope that you can have a enlightening experience and we hope you will,  share our podcast with your friends and family. Maybe your teachers mm-hmm we are really hoping to kind of get the ears of educators across the country, because definitely we feel like they really could, , use this message.

Definitely. Yeah. So we'll, uh, see you in the next episode and thanks for tuning in that's right. Come,  listen to Jimmy. He has a lot to say!

We are out.

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