Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
From the Radiolab podcast: We wrestle with the dark side of human nature, and ask whether it's something we can ever really understand, or fully escape.
With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show from 2011 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 percent of men, and 84 percent 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?
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by Pat Walters and Latif Nasser
Produced by Pat Walters
with help from Carter Hodge.
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Photo illustration by Alex Cole with edits from Rebecca Rand
Video by Rebecca Rand
From the Radiolab podcast: We wrestle with the dark side of human nature, and ask whether it's something we can ever really understand, or fully escape.
With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show from 2011 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 percent of men, and 84 percent 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?
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by Pat Walters and Latif Nasser
Produced by Pat Walters
with help from Carter Hodge.
🎧 Subscribe to Radiolab wherever you listen to podcasts: lnk.to/radiolab!youtube
🔎 Subscribe to Radiolab on YouTube: bit.ly/3I9KI53
🖋 Subscribe to Radiolab’s Newsletter: radiolab.org/newsletter
🌱 Check out Radiolab's Starter Kit Playlist: bit.ly/3sX8f4P
👍 Like this video ✏️ and leave us a comment!
Follow Radiolab:
Instagram — instagram.com/radiolab
X — https://x.com/Radiolab
Facebook — facebook.com/Radiolab
Threads — threads.net/@radiolab
TikTok — tiktok.com/@radiolab
Our newsletter includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up here: radiolab.org/newsletter
Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today: radiolab.org/the-lab
Photo illustration by Alex Cole with edits from Rebecca Rand
Video by Rebecca Rand
