Radiolab

The Bad Show


Listen Later

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. 

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

RadiolabBy WNYC Studios

  • 4.6
  • 4.6
  • 4.6
  • 4.6
  • 4.6

4.6

42,266 ratings


More shows like Radiolab

View all
This American Life by This American Life

This American Life

90,842 Listeners

TED Radio Hour by NPR

TED Radio Hour

22,004 Listeners

Freakonomics Radio by Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Freakonomics Radio

32,185 Listeners

Fresh Air by NPR

Fresh Air

38,579 Listeners

Planet Money by NPR

Planet Money

30,821 Listeners

Hidden Brain by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain

43,733 Listeners

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! by NPR

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

38,831 Listeners

The Moth by The Moth

The Moth

27,174 Listeners

Invisibilia by NPR

Invisibilia

21,617 Listeners

99% Invisible by Roman Mars

99% Invisible

26,253 Listeners

Snap Judgment by Snap Judgment and PRX

Snap Judgment

11,676 Listeners

On the Media by WNYC Studios

On the Media

9,231 Listeners

Science Friday by Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Science Friday

6,442 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

112,759 Listeners

Throughline by NPR

Throughline

16,358 Listeners

Dolly Parton's America by WNYC Studios & OSM Audio

Dolly Parton's America

16,407 Listeners

The Other Latif by WNYC Studios

The Other Latif

471 Listeners

Terrestrials by WNYC

Terrestrials

1,187 Listeners