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understand in the same context.

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- So, early in the book, you raised
the question that I think you highlight is

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a very important question:
if you could go back in time, would you

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kill baby Hitler? This is somehow
a defining question. Can you explain?

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- Well, it's about whether you think
that people are born evil. So the

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question of "Would you kill baby Hitler?"
is meant to be something that gets

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people chatting about whether or not they
think that people are born with the traits

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that make them capable of extreme harm
towards others. Or whether they think

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it's socialized, whether it's
something that, maybe in how people are

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raised, sort of manifests over

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time. With Hitler, we know from
certainly psychologists who have pored

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over his traits over time
and looked at who he was over the

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course of his life, there's always
this question of, "Was he mad or bad?"

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And the answer to "Was he mad?"
Well, he certainly

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had some characteristics that
people would associate with, for

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example, maybe sadism, with this idea that

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he was less high on empathy
is probably also showcased

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in his work. But in terms
of whether he was born that

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way, I think the answer usually would be
no. And actually, in his early life, he

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didn't showcase quite a lot of the traits
that later defined the horrors that he

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was capable of. So would I go back in time
and kill baby Hitler? The answer is

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no because I don't think it's
a straight line from baby to adult,

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and I don't think people are born evil.

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- So you think a large part
of it is nurture versus nature,

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the environment shaping
the person to become, to

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manifest the evil that they
bring out to the world?

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- Well, and I'd be careful with using the
word evil because I think we shouldn't use

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it to describe human beings because
it most commonly "others" people. In

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fact, I think it makes us capable
of perpetrating horrendous crimes

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against those we label evil.
So for me, that word

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is the end of a conversation.
It's when we call somebody evil,

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we say, "This person is so different
from me that I don't even need

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to bother trying to understand why they
are capable of doing terrible things

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because I would never do such things.
I am good." And so that

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artificial differentiation between
good and evil is something that,

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certainly with the book,
I'm trying to dismantle. And that's why

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introducing continuums for different kinds
of negative traits is really important,

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and introducing this idea that there's
nothing fundamental to people

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that makes them capable
of great harm. We all have the

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capacity to kill people and murder
people and do other terrible things. The

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question is, why we don't do those
things rather than why we do those things

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quite often. So I think humanizing and

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understanding that we all have these
traits is the most important thing in

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my book, certainly. - Yeah,
I think a prerequisite of doing

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evil, I see this in war
a lot, is to dehumanize

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the other. In order to be able
to murder them on scale, you have to

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reformulate the war as a fight
between good and evil. And

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the interesting thing you
see with war is both sides

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think that it's a battle
of good versus evil. It almost

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always is like that,
especially at large-scale wars.

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- That's right,
and on top of dehumanization,

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there is also this other thing

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called de-individuation, which
is where you see yourself as part of the

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group, and you no longer see yourself
as an individual. And so, it's this

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fight of us versus them. And so you
need both of those things. You need that

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sort of collapse of empathy for other
people, the people who are on the

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other side. And you need this idea
that you can be swallowed by the

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group, and that gives you a sense of

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also the cloak of justice,
the cloak of morality, even

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when, you know, maybe you're on the
wrong side. And that's where, I mean,

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getting into sort of who's on the right
side of each war is always a more

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complicated issue.

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But certainly calling other people
evil and calling the other side evil

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and dehumanizing them is crucial
to most of these kinds of fights.

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- Yeah, you promote empathy as an
important thing to do when we're trying

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to understand each other, and then
a lot of people are uncomfortable

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with empathy when it
comes to folks that we

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traditionally label as evil.
Hitler's an example. To have

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empathy means that you're
somehow dirtying yourself by

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the evil. What's your case for empathy,
even when we're talking

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about some of the darker
humans in human history?

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- My case for empathy, or evil
empathy, as I sometimes call it,

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so empathy for people who we

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often call evil... Also,
the title of my book is Evil, or in

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the UK market, it's Making Evil,
which is a reference to a Nietzsche quote,

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which is, "Thinking evil

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is making evil." The idea being
that evil is a label we place onto

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others. There's nothing inherent
to anything that makes it

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evil. And so, I also think
that we need to dismantle that and

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empathize with people we call evil
because if we're saying that this is the

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worst kind of act or worst kind
of manifestation of what somebody can be,

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so if someone can destroy
others, torture others, hurt

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others... I work as a criminal
psychologist, so I work a lot on

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sexual abuse cases, on rape cases,
on murder trials. And so,

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in those contexts, that word
evil is used all the time. So,

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this person is evil. And if we're
doing that, then we need to go, okay,

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but what we actually want is,
we don't really just want to label people.

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We want to

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stop that behavior from happening, and
the only way we're going to do that is if

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we understand what led
that person to come to that

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situation and to engage in that behavior.
And so, that's why evil empathy,

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I think, is

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crucial, because ultimately what we
want is to make society safer. And the

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only way we can do that is to understand
the psychological and social levers that

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led them to engage in this
behavior in the first place.