In the apocryphal story of the Hartlepool monkey, the residents of the town hang a shipwrecked monkey for being a French spy. Why do we search for scapegoats and how can we prevent ourselves from blaming the wrong person?

In this podcast we examine the phenomenon of scapegoating and try to understand the human desire to find someone else to blame for our problems. We tackle the concept of blame, look at how to avoid attributing it erroneously and consider whether the monkey was in fact guilty.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

- Was a monkey really hanged in Hartlepool?? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-40801937#:~:text=%22There%20is%20no%20evidence%20whatsoever,retired%20teacher%20from%20the%20town

- Miscarriages of Justice Registry https://evidencebasedjustice.exeter.ac.uk/miscarriages-of-justice-registry/

- Narrative Retribution and Cognitive Processing https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338233193_Narrative_Retribution_and_Cognitive_Processing

- René Girard and the ‘Scapegoat Mechanism’ https://iep.utm.edu/girard/

- Framed: Utilitarianism and Punishment of the Innocent https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/236359854.pdf

- Wiki: Sanctions http://sanctionswiki.org/

- Freedom House rights and liberties rankings https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Image: Oliver Dixon under CC BY-SA 2.0