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The Bad Show

With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit of really, really bad that's in some of us.   Cruelty, violence, badness... in this episode we begin with a chilling statistic: 91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors. Then, we reconsider what Stanley Milgram's famous experiment really revealed about human nature (it's both better and worse than we thought). Next, we meet a man who scrambles our notions of good and evil: chemist Fritz Haber, who won a Nobel Prize in 1918...around the same time officials in the US were calling him a war criminal. And we end with the story of a man who chased one of the most prolific serial killers in US history, then got a chance to ask him the question that had haunted him for years: why? This episode was produced with help from Carter Hodge. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. 
Duration
1h 10m
Broadcast on
27 Jul 2018
Audio Format
other

With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit of really, really bad that's in some of us.  

Cruelty, violence, badness... in this episode we begin with a chilling statistic: 91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors. Then, we reconsider what Stanley Milgram's famous experiment really revealed about human nature (it's both better and worse than we thought). Next, we meet a man who scrambles our notions of good and evil: chemist Fritz Haber, who won a Nobel Prize in 1918...around the same time officials in the US were calling him a war criminal. And we end with the story of a man who chased one of the most prolific serial killers in US history, then got a chance to ask him the question that had haunted him for years: why?

This episode was produced with help from Carter Hodge.

Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. 


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WNYC Studios is supported by WISE. WISE, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. With a WISE account, you can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies, with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get WISE. Download the WISE app today. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, I'm Robert Krollwich. Radiolab is supported by CASPER. Check out the CASPER or the WAVE mattress, providing supportive comfort for everybody type. Visit CASPER.com/Radiolab and use code Radiolab, but check out to get $50 towards select mattresses. Terms and conditions apply. I'm Robert Krollwich. Radiolab is supported by Audible. So as we begin this episode of The Bad Show, check out The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language in the mind. Go to audible.com/radiolab or text Radiolab to 500-500 for a free 30-day trial and a free audiobook. Oh, wait, you're listening to Radiolab. - Radiolab. - From WNYC. Okay, here we go. Ready, Robert? - Yes. - Jad Abomrod. - Robert Krollwich. - I feel like we haven't you and I sat together and said our names in quite some time. - That's because Mollie's been in the chair. - Mollie's been killing it with the GONAT series. - That was for those of you who haven't heard it yet. This is kind of a rush through sex reproduction. What makes boys boys and girls girls and the infinity of gray spaces in between. - Yeah. - And now that we're sort of just on the other side of that. - We thought that maybe as we turn a corner ourselves, we should refresh, but in a hot sort of way. - I mean, you know, it's just one of those things we've been bringing back shows that we think are just vibrating still in the world. - So at a time when there are people all over our country, eyeing other people all over our country and thinking she's bad, he's bad, you're bad, I'm good, you're bad. There's a lot of black and white thinking happening right now. - Yeah. And so we've decided that it's time to go back to something we did once upon a time when we were wondering about good and bad.

Transcription truncated.

With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit of really, really bad that's in some of us.   Cruelty, violence, badness... in this episode we begin with a chilling statistic: 91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors. Then, we reconsider what Stanley Milgram's famous experiment really revealed about human nature (it's both better and worse than we thought). Next, we meet a man who scrambles our notions of good and evil: chemist Fritz Haber, who won a Nobel Prize in 1918...around the same time officials in the US were calling him a war criminal. And we end with the story of a man who chased one of the most prolific serial killers in US history, then got a chance to ask him the question that had haunted him for years: why? This episode was produced with help from Carter Hodge. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.