Expert on Gun Violence & Mental Health; Professor of Sociology & Psychiatry & Director of the Center for Medicine, Health & Society at Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN, USA
Live Event: $10,000 - $20,000 Virtual Event: $5,000 - $10,000 More Fee Info

Jonathan Metzl Biography

Jonathan Metzl is an acclaimed physician and sociologist who speaks, teaches, and writes on a range of topics including mental illness and gun violence, race and whiteness in America, health and healthcare, and diversity and structural competency in higher education.

Dr. Metzl is the author of the groundbreaking book, "Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland." A New York Times bestseller, the book is an in-depth look at why so many working-class white Americans support politicians whose policies are literally killing them. The book was also the winner of the 2020 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award. His latest publication, the 2024 release "What We've Become: Living in Dying in a Country of Arms," has won numerous honors including being named one of Kirkus Review's Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 and a New York Times Editor's Choice Pick, and is the recipient of the Alexander Heard Award, the Harry Stack Sullivan award, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry 2025 Award for Scholarship, and the 2024 Doran Award for Contributions to Global Public Health, among others.

Being a gun violence expert, professor, and psychiatrist is a unique combination that allows Dr. Metzl to speak and write about gun violence in America, and in particular to address stereotypes that link guns with race or mental illness, or that blame mental illness for mass shootings and other gun crimes. The topic is the focus of "What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms," his 2024 book that, by looking at a racially-charged mass shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, reexamines how we as a nation should address gun violence.

He is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his MD from the University of Missouri, his MA in humanities/poetics and psychiatric internship/residency from Stanford University, and a PhD in American culture from University of Michigan.

Winner of the 2020 APA Benjamin Rush Award for Scholarship and a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship, Dr. Metzl has written extensively about the relationships between guns, mass shootings, and mental illness. His other books include "The Protest Psychosis," "Prozac on the Couch," and "Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality."

BOOK Jonathan Metzl

Speaker profile last updated by AAE Talent Team on 06/16/2025.

Jonathan Metzl Speaking Topics

  • What We've Become – Guns in America

    “What is the meaning of public health in an armed society?” asks psychiatrist and author Dr. Jonathan Metzl. In his vital book, "What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms," Dr. Metzl takes on an urgent topic: mass shootings and the contested social and racial politics of American firearms. Rather than preaching to one side or the other of the polarizing gun debate, he asks us to step back and think of the broader questions we face as a nation: How do we imagine safety? Are the divisions too deep, or is it possible to come together in solidarity? And, how on earth did we get here? This piercing analysis shows mass shootings as a symptom of our deepest unresolved conflicts. Dr. Metzl ultimately lights the long road of alliance-forging, racial-reckoning, and political power-brokering we must take to set things right.

  • Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Shaped the American Pandemic Moment

    Jonathan Metzl’s award-winning 2019 book, "Dying of Whiteness," provided a warning: white Americans were drawn to politicians who pledged to make their lives great again, but whose policies actually placed them at greater risk of illness and death. Racial resentment fueled pro-gun laws in Missouri, caused resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and drove cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. The direct results of these policies? Increasing deaths by gun suicide, rising dropout rates, and falling life expectancies. As Dr. Metzl shows in this talk, rather than mobilizing a course correction, falling life expectancy became the core on which was built an ever-more-expansive political movement during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to widespread dismantling of public health infrastructure and reinforcement of racial and class hierarchies. This talk ultimately offers a smart and necessary plan for working collectively toward a society that would be healthier for everyone.

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Jonathan Metzl Videos

Jonathan Metzl - "Real Time with Bill Maher"

Jonathan Metzl - "Real Time with Bill Maher"

Professor and author Jonathan Metzl joins Bill Maher to discuss how the politics of racial resentment is killing America's heartland.

Jonathan Metzl | NowThis

Jonathan Metzl | NowThis

How Racial Resentment Is Killing White Working Class Americans

Jonathan Metzl - NSL Bites

Jonathan Metzl - NSL Bites

Jonathan Metzl, MD, PhD, talks about how guns are a way of life for many despite mortal consequences.

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  • What topics does Jonathan Metzl speak about?

  • Where does Jonathan Metzl travel from?

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Jonathan Metzl is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics such as What We've Become – Guns in America, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Shaped the American Pandemic Moment , Structural Competency: New Medicine for Inequalities That are Making Us Sick and Protest Psychosis: What the Race-Based Overdiagnosis of Schizophrenia in the 1960s Reveals About Today’s CRT Wars. The estimated speaking fee range to book Jonathan Metzl for your event is $10,000 - $20,000. Jonathan Metzl generally travels from Nashville, TN, USA and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Nora D. Volkow, Vikram Patel, Paul Bloom, Dr. Carl Hart and Melissa Creary. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Jonathan Metzl for an upcoming live or virtual event.

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