Historian Kevin Impellizeri shares a story of a video game controversy to his friends: Kate Lynch, Phil Thomas, and Andy Hunter. We continue our deep dive into self-proclaimed "killologist" Dave Grossman and his 1995 book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), dissecting his claims that America is in the midst of a hellish Purge style world of violent teens who have been activated by watching too many horror movies and playing one too many light gun games.
Topics discussed include: Dave Grossman has never watched a horror movie or played a video game (but that won't stop him from having strong opinions anyway), whether Rodney King was a serial killer, Kevin has a problem with A Clockwork Orange, the gang learns there actually is no crime, and Andy offers more choices between Pokémon and prescription drugs.
For more on possible theories behind America's dramatic crime decrease since the 1990s, check out: Dana Lind and German Lopez, “16 Theories for Why Crime Plummeted in the US,” Vox, May 20, 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/2/13/8032231/crime-drop.
Theme Music: Occam's Sikhwee by Sikh Knowledge (Free Music Archive: https://bit.ly/33G4sLO), used under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US (https://bit.ly/33JXogQ)
More info, including show notes and sources at http://scandalousgamespodcast.wordpress.com.