Robert Sullivan
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
What a lovely thing to hear. So, yeah, it's tough to be known as a rat guy. But then right after that, it's good to be known as a rat guy. I asked Sullivan to introduce himself for the recording. My name's Robert Sullivan, and I write things. And I asked for a bit more detail. My name is Robert Sullivan, and I write books and magazine articles.
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
And I write about places that maybe people haven't looked at, or I try to look at places differently from maybe how they've been looked at.
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
The idea that I'm best known for anything is an idea I struggle with. Hey, you won a Guggenheim. I did. It's not clear. They could have been thinking of another Robert Sullivan.
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
The concrete reason was I was on a reporting job. I was covering a whale hunt for the New York Times magazine. I was out on a reservation, the Macaw Nation's reservation, out at the very tip of the United States of America, the continental United States, the Pacific Northwest. And people were there to protest the hunting of whales.
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
There were people on the reservation who believed that maybe we shouldn't hunt whales right now. There were also people who thought they should. There were also people who thought that whether they should or they shouldn't was a moot point because it's a matter of tribal sovereignty. And this was an incredible thing to be witness of, this debate and this action.
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
While I was there, I met a bunch of people who were working for animal rights groups. And one of them said, I'm not going to be here tomorrow for the protest. I've got to go back to Seattle. I've got to go back to our offices. I asked why. They said, because we have pest control people coming. And I said, well, what are you doing? And they said, we have rats.
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
I said, are you going to trap and release them or what? Because I just figured. And they said, no, they're rats. We're going to have the exterminator take care of them. It just suddenly dawned on me in my abstract pursuit of where is the division between what we think of as natural and not natural. that this was a line in the philosophical sand
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
I think that the history of rat control in New York City and many cities is aligned with the history of mayors wanting to get attention for being great and taking care of things. Just starting way back, Mayor Lindsay gave out metal garbage cans. Mayor Dinkins built housing. Very effective way to help with rat problems. Mayor Giuliani took trash cans off the streets in Harlem.
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
It's a kind of tributary, I guess, of the broken windows theory that says that if you take the trash cans off the street, people won't throw trash on the streets. Mayor Bloomberg is the rat data guy. He was all about where the data is for rats, like where rat bite reports are, which is a complicated statistic. Why?
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
Because people who are getting bitten by rats might not report them, might not have the wherewithal or the, frankly, resources to go about doing that. And so Adams is going to kill them by drowning them in beer or whatever he does. Like it's just brutal war on rats and a take no prisoner style.
Freakonomics Radio
623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?
I haven't read the Freud Ratman stuff. I've put it off all these years because, you know, I can only take so much therapy, and frankly, therapists can only take so much of me.