Unabridged Interview: James Kimmel, Jr.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:02)
Hello, friends, Lee C. Camp here. You're listening to No Small Endeavor. This is our unabridged interview with James Kimmel, Jr. No, not Jimmy Kimmel, not that Mr. Kimmel, but James Kimmel, Jr. James is on the Yale University Medical School faculty, though not a doctor, a lawyer, as you'll hear in the interview, the important role his being a lawyer has played in his life's work. I must say, this is one of my favorite interviews I've done in a while. It's really profound and really remarkable, I think, and I think you'll find it just fascinating. There's one highly practical exercise to do that James took me through in like three minutes or less at the end of the interview that I think you'll also find. I'm still thinking about it. It's really fascinating, but you'll hear James talking about his new book, The Science of Revenge, Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction. You'll hear a remarkable story about his own life as a young man that got him into doing this kind of work. Again, just remarkable all the way around. I hope you enjoy it. Here's James Kimmel, Jr. Hello, my friends. We're getting ready to launch another No Small Endeavor cohort, set to begin in September. These have been a delight. Our cohort invites intellectually curious individuals to deeply explore what it means to live a good life with the ultimate goal that our work together will make space for greater resilience, joy, and a vision for how to contribute meaningfully to the world around us. If you're someone who's interested in asking big questions like what sort of life is a life worth living and how am I pursuing my vision of a good life, if you're interested as well in considering those kinds of questions in light of moral philosophy, human psychology, and the social sciences, and a generous hospitable Christian theology, then you might just be the perfect candidate. You can check out our socials or navigate to our website, nosmallendeavor.com/cohort.
Again, that's nosmallendeavor.com/cohort. There you can learn more and submit an interest form. Again, that's nosmallendeavor.com/cohort.
We look forward to hearing from you. James Kimmel, welcome to No Small Endeavor.

**James Kimmel, Jr.** (2:13)
Lee, thanks for having me.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:15)
I'm so excited to talk to you. I think your new book, Science of Revenge, a couple of years out now, is just brilliant and I think it's so helpful and I am deeply grateful for the work that you've been doing, so thank you.

**James Kimmel, Jr.** (2:27)
Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. And actually, it's only been out one year, just celebrated its anniversary last week, but it feels, I'm with you, it sort of feels like it's been out for a lot longer than that.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:40)
Well, I'm grateful that it's out.
You, you know, it's common among academics to talk about research is me search. And so I'm wondering if you would start and you share some of this in the book, but I'm wondering if you would start with kind of your own biographical highlights that led you to doing this kind of work on revenge.

**James Kimmel, Jr.** (3:01)
Yeah, sure. I'm happy to do that because I do have a unique kind of, I don't know, foundational story that has affected almost every day of my life since my teenage years. So I was raised on a farm in Central Pennsylvania and in my middle and upper teen years, I was subjected to a lot of bullying there. This was by a group of guys who lived on neighboring farms to ours. And that bullying culminated one night with them coming to our farm, our house, and staging an attack that ended up waking us up in the middle of the night to the sound of a gunshot.
And when I looked outside in the morning and went out to feed our animals, I found our dog, a hunting dog named Paula Beagle, dead in her pen with a bullet hole in her head in a pool of blood. So it was a pretty shocking moment in my life, that was for sure.

**Lee C. Camp** (4:06)
Lord. Yeah. And then as I recollect the story, this ramps up and then you end up finding yourself out for revenge.

**James Kimmel, Jr.** (4:15)
Yeah, that's exactly right. So, you know, this was in the early 1980s, my parents contacted the state police there and they took a report after the dog shooting. But they made it clear they weren't going to do anything else about it. Not out of callousness, it's just their limitations of their resources. And I think they regarded it as a kid's thing, even though a dog had been killed. So, they kind of dropped it. My parents weren't going to pursue it. My dad was an insurance agent who sold insurance to farmers and wasn't, I don't think, about to go and jeopardize what he did because of some dispute that none of us could understand between me and a group of boys on other farms. So, it got dropped two weeks, two or three weeks later. I was home pretty late at night by myself. It was dark. My parents were out somewhere. My brother was as well.