Feb 2, 2026

Unforgiving Places

The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence

Jens Ludwig

Hosted by Alfred Marcus

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Summary

Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while others don't, Ludwig shows gun violence to be more circumstantial—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches lead us to believe.

Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig’s immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including “countless hours spent in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald's,” Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a breakthrough work at the cutting edge of behavioral economics. As Ludwig shows, progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the ten-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.

Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He is the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago's Crime Lab, codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research's working group on the economics of crime, elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, and a member of the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Science.

Alfred Marcus is the Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School, University of Minnesota.

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Alfred Marcus

As the Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School, I’ve spent my career helping students, scholars, and executives understand how companies succeed, why they fail, and how they can rise again. I’ve authored over 20 books and numerous articles in leading journals. My writings span immigrant entrepreneurship, demography, corporate turnarounds, and sustainability among other topics. My latest book explores how firms like Dell and Best Buy reinvented themselves. It is called Comeback: Can Great Firms Rise Again? It is published by the University of Toronto Press and will be available at the end of March.

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