WEBVTT

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Speaking of which, you've done
a lot of really great podcast shows.

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One of them is Bad People Podcast.
You co-host it. It has

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over 100 episodes, each covering a crime.

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What's maybe the most
disturbing crime you've covered?

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One of the most disturbing crimes
that we covered on Bad People,

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and just to be clear,

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Bad People, much like the title Evil,
is tongue in cheek, where the idea

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is it's people whom we refer to as bad
people. And then it's always a question of

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who are these, quote
unquote, "bad people,"

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and are we all capable
of doing these terrible

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things? But one of the most,
certainly, problematic, dark

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cases that we covered
was the Robert Pickton case. And

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the episodes are called Piggy's
Palace, because that was the

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nickname for the farm
where Robert Pickton brought

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victims whom he had kidnapped,
and then he killed them, and

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he did terrible things to their bodies.
And rumors have it,

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certainly, that he fed some of these
victims to pigs. Now, one of the reasons I

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covered that case is actually because
it was influential in my own career. So,

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Robert Pickton is one of the most
famous Canadian serial killers of all

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time. And as I was doing my undergrad

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at Simon Fraser University in Canada,
I was being taught by someone

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called Stephen Hart. And Stephen Hart was
an expert witness on the Robert Pickton

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trial, and so he was keeping us abreast
of some of the developments of what

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he was covering.
And I found it so interesting,

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and I loved Stephen Hart as a person,
and he seemed to have this sense of humor,

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this gallows humor, around
it all, despite being faced

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with one of the arguably worst
people in Canadian history. And

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I thought that that was so
interesting, that someone could be

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so nice, so kind,
so wonderful, and be an expert

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witness for these kinds of people. And so
that's one of the reasons I went into

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the field is because of this case as well.
And so we had him on the show.

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So he came onto Bad People
and we interviewed him for it.

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- All right. And he has done, I imagine,
a lot of really difficult cases.

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- Yes, he's done a lot of difficult
cases, as have other researchers like

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Elizabeth Loftus, who's one of the

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main founders of the area of false
memory research, which is what

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I also do. I do research
on memory and false memory

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and witness statements.
And Elizabeth Loftus has

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also been a recent expert
for the Ghislaine Maxwell case.

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She was in the press. She was in
the press, and so she has worked with

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lawyers to educate the court
on memory in lots of

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really, really controversial cases.
But the way she would explain it is that

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it's still her role to just train people
and teach people on how memory works.

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She's not there to decide whether people
are guilty or innocent, but she is there

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to help people distinguish between
fact and fiction when it comes to how

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our memories work or don't.

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- So what kind of person feeds
their victims to pigs? What's

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interesting about that psychology?

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- The psychology about Robert Pickton?
I mean, he was a tricky person because I

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think he was profoundly lonely, and this
is something we see with a lot of serial

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killers is that they have
this loneliness, which I think

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not only contributes to them committing
the crimes in the first place, but

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also allows them to get away with things
because they don't have as much of

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a social

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network or any social network that is
helping them to do what's called reality

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monitoring, to understand
what's true and what's not.

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And so when you see people get
radicalized in their own thoughts, whether

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that's in the sense of things
like schizophrenia where you've got

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psychosis, you've got delusions,
maybe command hallucinations. That's

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when you think you're hearing voices
and someone is telling you that you

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have to do something, usually something
harmful to other people. And if you don't

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follow those, you will
hear those voices forever.

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They're profoundly distressing, and they

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are one of the aspects of schizophrenia
that if you have, it does

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make you more prone to violence. And so

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for these kinds of cases, if you don't
have someone intervening, whether that's a

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family member or a therapist
saying, "How can

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you tell whether this thought
is real?" Maybe that thought,

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maybe you're not hearing that

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voice, right? Maybe that aspect
of what you're thinking isn't true

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and bringing you back closer to reality.
You can just wander off

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to whatever alternate
universe that you might live in

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in your head, and it's the same
with radicalization in other contexts is

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that you see that people who drift more
and more into a certain group that has

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certain beliefs that are maybe divorced
from the evidence, divorced from

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reality. You can see that people
will get more extreme over

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time, and unless you have a tether that
brings you back, that allows you to do

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reality monitoring, it's going to be
very difficult to find your way out of

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that. So with serial killers,
we find this reality monitoring

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problem, and I think part of that's
related to the lack of social networks

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that people have.

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- That's fascinating. So that's one
important component of serial killers.

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What else can we say about the psychology?
What motivates them?

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So if you look at some of the famous
serial killers, Ted Bundy, John Wayne

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Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, is there
other things we could say about their

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psychology that motivates them?
So interesting, the tether to

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reality. I mean, loneliness
is a part of the human condition.

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It is, in fact, one of its side effects
is you can get untethered. And then with

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some of these brains, I guess
the untethered goes to some dark place.

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- The untethered goes to a
dark place, and it then is

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often combined with some
of these other dark

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tetrad traits. So you've got someone
who maybe is high on psychopathy, low on

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empathy, someone who's high
on sadism, someone who thinks

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that it's okay to pursue your own goals.
And your own goal can

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be, like with Jeffrey Dahmer, you can
be wanting to create the perfect partner,

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which in some ways seems to be what he

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was trying to do by killing people
and piecing them together and sewing up a

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sort of new version.
There's something in that where I can't

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help but go, "That's so sad." I don't

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go, "Oh my God, how awful."
Of course it's atrocious. Of course it's

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heinous, but I have
this real sympathy for that,

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and I think that's important
for us to have, though.

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And not to say, "I can't relate
to this person at all," but to say,

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"That is an extreme manifestation
of something I have felt, and the

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difference between me engaging in that
and this person engaging in that are these

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other factors."
But the core is in all of us.

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- Do you think all of us
are capable of evil,

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of some of the things we label as evil?

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- I think all of us are capable of doing
basically the worst things we can imagine.

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And one of the reasons

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I think that is because you can
see neighbors turning on each other,

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especially if you look historically
at the start of wars or big

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political moments where you have
people who would have called each other

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friends turning each other
in to the police, killing each other,

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doing terrible things. So I think all
it takes is to become convinced that the

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people you think are your friends
are actually your enemies,

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whether that's just in your own

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world or in a larger political
national landscape that

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I don't think it takes all that much
for us to be capable of doing terrible

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things. But that's also why it's really
important when things are good and

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when you're not at war and when you
have the capacity to think deeply about

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important issues,
to train your mind on these

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thoughts of knowing that
things like loneliness can

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manifest in these extreme
ways, that things like

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jealousy and aggression,
that they can turn into murder,

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that they can turn into these

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horrible versions.
And to then also spot the red flags

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if you start going down that path.
I think if we don't rehearse

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evil, if you will, we are much
more likely to engage in it,

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especially in those moments where we don't
have much time or energy to really think

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about what we're doing.

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- Yeah, I really appreciate the way you
think and the way you talk about this.

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Listening to history, when I'm
reading history books, I imagine myself

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doing the thing I'm
reading about, and I almost

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always can imagine that,
like when I'm being honest with myself.

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- And it's important to admit
that to ourselves. And research

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on murder fantasies finds that most
men have fantasized about killing

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someone, about 70% in two studies. And

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most women as well. More than 50%
of women have fantasized about killing

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somebody. So murder fantasies are
incredibly common, and certainly

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according to some researchers,
that's a good thing. Being

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able to rehearse and think
through doing the most terrible

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things is a great dress
rehearsal for also how we

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don't want to live our lives.
And only if you are able to fully

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think through, "What would
I actually be like if I was

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engaging in this? What would I
be thinking? Who would I be with?

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What would be my...

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the group that I'm charging
against this other person? You know,

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who am I there with?" As you said, like
really putting yourself in the shoes of

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these people who have done
terrible things. That is

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how you also realize that you do
not want those consequences. And

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so yeah, you maybe want
to murder this person,

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but you don't really want
to murder this person. That's that

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intuitive sort of animalistic brain
coming in. But then luckily, we

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have higher reasoning that goes, actually,
if you think this through, that's a pretty

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terrible consequence for yourself. So the
better thing to do is not to murder this

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person. So I think it's
adaptive to be able to

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fantasize and think about
these things. Obviously,

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if you start getting
to a point where you're

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ruminating and you're going in these
circles where you're constantly

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fantasizing about doing dark things,
especially to a specific person, I'd

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always advise seeing somebody,
to talk to a psychologist, for

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example. Because that then does become
a risk factor for acting on those dark

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fantasies. But up to that point, if it's
just a fleeting thought or something that

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in one day you had these thoughts,
that is totally healthy, I would say.

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- And also, I think it's useful
to simulate or think through what it would

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take

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to say no in that situation. Meaning, once
you're able to imagine yourself doing evil

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things, you have to imagine
the difficult act of

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resisting. A lot of people think
they would resist in Nazi Germany.

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Well, most people didn't,
and there's a reason for that.

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It's not easy.
Same reason, I've seen this.

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If something bad is happening
on a public street, most

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people, it's the bystander effect.
Most people just stand there and

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watch. I've seen it once
in my life. Yeah, this is

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humans, so it's actually you
want to simulate stepping up.

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- Yeah, so it's also been
called the heroic imagination.

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Someone who has studied

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evil, quote unquote, at length is Philip
Zimbardo. He did the Stanford Prison

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Experiment, and that was an experiment
which is... I mean, it's now been

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torn apart in various ways.
It was absolutely influential for

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psychology. It's where participants
were randomly assigned whether they

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would be prisoners or guards
in a mock prison experiment, and then

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for a number of days,
they were told to do various

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things. And it got out
of control, and the guards

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went way over what they were supposed
to be doing, and they effectively started

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pseudo-torturing some
of these inmates or these

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pretend inmates. And the whole thing
had to be stopped prematurely, but it was

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really fundamental in showing how
just by randomly being assigned

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into guard, the person in charge,
or inmate, you can, within a

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matter of days, have a completely
different way of thinking about one

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another. And so Philip Zimbardo
has also spoken at length about evil

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and that all of us are capable of it
in the right circumstances, but he also

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is a big proponent of what he
calls the heroic imagination.

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And the heroic imagination is really
what the purpose of everything I do is.

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The purpose of what I do isn't
just to go, "Ooh, this is curious,"

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and to stop there. The point

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is to then prevent it, and to prevent
it in ourselves because that's, I think,

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ultimately what has to happen. You can't
do a top-down sort of government-level

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approach to trying to be so tough on crime
that no one will ever commit crime.

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That's impossible. But you can change, to

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say it in a tacky way, the hearts
and minds of individuals to recognize the

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pathways towards evil
and to go, "Wait, I'm off

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track. I don't want to go this way,
and I'm going to stop myself here,

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and here's how I can find my

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way back." And so the heroic
imagination is exercising

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that. I see someone on the street.
How do I make sure that they're

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okay? How do I not become a bystander?
And actually, the bystander stuff is

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interesting because there
was a really famous case, the murder

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of Kitty Genovese, and there
were all of these both ear and

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eyewitnesses. So an ear witness
is someone who just hears things,

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and an eyewitness is someone who

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sees the crime happening, and they
didn't intervene in the murder of this

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woman. And so this case
was often taken as this

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almost example of, "Look how terrible
human beings are. We just walk by. We

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don't care about what's happening
to strangers on the streets."

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And actually, what's happened

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since is that there's been lots
of other bystander experiments, and they

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have not substantiated this.
So we need to be very careful

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with looking at these
extreme cases and going,

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"How horrible that this
happened to this one

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person," and it is. But that doesn't mean
that that's always how it happens. And

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so actually, what we find in bystander
research is that most of the time,

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bystanders do intervene. It's just when
there has already been a crowd that has

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accumulated, you read the room,
and you assume, "Well, nobody

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else has intervened yet, and so
it must not be a real problem."

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That desire to not stand out in a negative
way is often what hinders heroism.

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I mean, that's why we look at heroes,
people who especially risk their own

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lives to save others,
especially strangers.

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We see them with a sort
of respect that nobody else gets,

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and that's because we recognize
that we might not be capable of that.

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and that's because we recognize
that we might not be capable of

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that. If I saw a stranger
drowning in a river, would I

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really risk my life jumping
in the river to maybe save

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them? I think that's
a big question mark. And so

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when people do that, especially
when people almost have this inherent

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reaction that they just jump in, they just
go for it, that is something that is a

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really admirable quality that we as humans
do celebrate, and we should. And I

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think often we should celebrate
those incidents more and not

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the, you know, the bystander moments
where we didn't intervene. We should be

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normalizing intervening. - And again,
this idea of heroic imagination,

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actually simulating, imagining
yourself standing up and saving the

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person when a crowd is watching,
they're drowning,

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to be the one that dives in,
tries to help. You mentioned