joining us from los angeles is a senior staff writer with rolling stone, stephen rodrick with an extensive piece in the magazine. epidemic fueled by guns, poverty and isolation has swept across the west with middle age men dying in record numbers. thank you for being here this morning. tell us what prompted you to investigate and write the story. guest: thank you for having me. there is ad it was suicide epidemic across all demographics. that is something my editor and i talked about and the more we dug into it we realized the worst of it was among middle-age men and as someone who is a member of the demographic, i became intrigued and fascinated about why this was an just started investigating it from there. host: let's give our viewers a snapshot from your extensive piece of rolling stone. men in the u.s. average 22 suicides per 100,000 people with those ages of 45-64 representing the fastest growing group. per are up from 20.8 100,000 and 19 eddie nine to 30.1 and 2017. the states with the highest rates are montana and alaska, all roughly double the national rate. and idaho are also in
