The Bad Show

Hey, Latif here. I have now been working in podcasts for over 15 years. And one thing that still consistently surprises me about this industry is the enduring appeal of true crime podcasts. No judgment if you are a fan of true crime. I just personally have never really gotten into them. I feel like they just make me paranoid. But I feel like the episode we are about to replay, which is one of the all-time top Radiolab episodes, is the closest thing Radiolab has ever done to a true crime episode. It's got crimes. They are gut-wrenching. They are true. But the episode is really trying to do something, I think, bigger. It's trying to grapple with these profound questions like, what makes someone bad? And are they different from the rest of us? and how do you live in a world where people do bad things for seemingly no good reason at all? Also, if you listen close, you'll hear a cameo from me. This is one of the first Radiolab episodes I was ever on. You can treat it like a little Sonic Where's Waldo. Anyway, here it is, The Bad Show. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From. WNYC. Rewind. Hello, David. Yes, hello. This is Pat. Oh, hi, Pat. Let's begin with this story from our producer, Pat Walters. Pat, go ahead. Okay, so I heard this one from this guy named David. His name is David Buss. Two S's. He's a psychology professor. At the University of Texas at Austin. And this particular story, it comes from a book that David wrote. Could you just tell me the little story that you begin your book with? Okay, yes. This is one of the things that sparked my interest in the topic of murder. The whole thing happened several years ago. I had a very good friend. Another professor at the university. And I used to socialize with him and his wife. And one evening they were throwing a party and invited me over. And so when I went to the party, the party was already in full swing and I got there, walked in and asked his wife where this friend of mine was. And she got a disgusted look on her face and said that he was up in the bedroom. And so I went up to the bedroom to find him and he was in a rage. In a rage? How? Like you walk into the room, what do you find? Well, he started fuming that his wife had dissed him. What did she do? She expressed disapproval about his clothing choices. She made fun of his shirt or something. But did it publicly in front of her friends. So he felt publicly humiliated. And while David's sitting in the bedroom with this friend, the guy looks up at him and he says, I'm going to kill her. How did he say it? Like quietly or? Like through his teeth, you know, I'm going to kill her. David had always known this guy to be pretty mild mannered. But he is a large, very strong man with a black belt in karate. I knew what he was capable of. And so I suggested that we go out for a walk. And I basically spent the next half hour walking around with him trying to cool him off. And eventually he did. He just calmed down. And did you go back to the party then and like continue dinner partying for a while? Yeah, I did. And he did too? Yes, and he did too. And then he seemed fine when I said goodbye to him. He seemed calm and I left and went home. And then it was several hours later in the middle of the night that I got the call. And it was his friend. And he says, can I come over and sleep on your couch? If I don't leave my house right now, I'm going to kill her. He was in this state of fury, he said, and instead of hitting his wife, he smashed his fist into the bathroom mirror and then realized that he had to leave the house or he was going to do damage to her. And so he says that and you're like, okay, yes, come over now. Yeah, exactly. Meanwhile, later that night on the other side of town, his wife went into hiding, literally disappeared for six months and didn't tell anyone where she was because she was terrified that he was going to kill her. This story made us wonder, is David's friend... Is he unusual? Or... Does everybody at some point have something dark in them that just tiptoes out, just from time to time? Yeah. This is Radiolab, and today, we're gonna get bad. So to speak. We've done a good show. This is a bad show. So you ask, like, why do people do bad things? Things actually need to be bad anyways. Like, how do you tell the real baddies from the rest of us? That's how I heard. I'm Chad Abumran. I'm Abitulic. This is Radiolab. The Bad Show. Okay, so what happened to David that night with his friend got him really curious about murder and badness and all these things we're thinking about. But it wasn't until a few years later that he learned something that really put what happened that night into context. By this point, David's moved on to a new university, and he's teaching an introductory psychology class. And I devoted one class session to the topic of homicide and why people kill. And I designed a little questionnaire where I simply asked the students, you know, have you ever thought about killing someone? And they would circle yes or no. Then he left some space at the bottom for them to elaborate, if they said yes. And, you know, the class ended and I went back to my office and I just sat at my desk and I started reading these. And I was just astonished. To find page after page of yeses. And not just yeses. But these very vivid descriptions about... Who they would kill, where they do it, when. The precise method. How many of them went into that kind of detail? I would say 75 or 80 percent. Wow. Were you a little bit like horrified? Like, oh my God, my students are murderers. Well, horrified is I was pretty stunned. And so I expanded the sample where we asked about 5,000 people. All over the world. Singapore, Peru, the UK. That same question. Have you ever thought about killing someone? And 91% of the men said yes and 84% of the women. said yes I've thought about killing someone yes if any sizable fraction actually acted on their homicidal fantasies the streets would be running running red yeah but that's just those are fantasies some of them actually seem like well here's one something more than just fantasies from a woman sure okay this is a 20 year old female we ask who did you think about killing and she said my ex-boyfriend we lived together for a couple months he was very aggressive he started calling me a whore and told me he didn't love me anymore so I broke up with him then a few months later he started calling me trying to get back together but I didn't want to he said that if I ever had a relationship with another man he was going to send videos of us having sex to all the people in my university The thing is that I do have a new boyfriend, but my ex-boyfriend doesn't know that yet, and I'm terrified that he'll do what he says. Then suddenly the thought occurred to me that my life would be much happier without him in existence. And then she said, I actually did this. I invited him for dinner, and as he was in the kitchen, looking stupid, peeling the carrots to make salad, I came up to him laughingly gently so that he wouldn't suspect anything. I thought about grabbing a knife quickly and stabbing him in the chest repeatedly until he was dead. I actually did the first thing, but he saw my intentions and ran away. When asked how close she came to killing him, she estimated 60%. I don't think I've ever had a fantasy that anatomically specific, where I would see the part of the other person that I was going to stab or plan it like that. Well, have you ever been blackmailed the way this woman was being blackmailed? No, no one has ever sent about a sex tape that I've ever, you know. So you don't know. It is a fair question to ask, what are the conditions under which you or me or any of us could do awful things? I think they'd have to be extreme in the extreme. Well. Because you know how mild-mannered I am. No, no. And you know what? This actually brings us to our first stop of the hour. So just to set it up, Robert, I'm going to give you this piece of paper here. What is this? So these are some word pairs. Read these words that you see. What are these words here? Yep. Nice day. Uh-huh. Fat neck. Yep. Sad face. What is this? Soft hair. I don't know what this is. These are just word pairs. I want you to commit them to memory. Commit them to memory. You know I have a little. And while you're doing that, just give me your finger. I'm going to connect this little electrode to your finger. There we go. There. Wait a second. Clear air. Okay, so give me the paper back. Already? Time's up. So I'm just going to go into this other room over here. Can you hear me? What? All right, so I'm going to talk to you over this intercom, okay? Okay. I'm going to give you a test. I'm not ready for this. Pay attention. All right. To the best of your memory, which word was matched with nice? Was it nice day, nice sky, nice job, or nice chair? Answer, please. I don't know. Wait a second. Just push the button that corresponds to the right word, go. Okay, I'm choosing job? Wrong. Answer is day. Sorry, man. 285 volts. I'm going to have to give you a little, uh... What did you just do? I just burst my eardrums. God. Obviously no need to be alarmed. That was not a real shock. We were just enacting an old, very famous experiment that you may have heard about. It is May 1962. Done by this guy. An experiment is being conducted in the Elegant Interaction Laboratory at Yale University. That's Stanley Milgram talking about the experiment in a film. In case you've never heard of this, you probably have, but in case you haven't, here's what he did. He recruited a bunch of subjects. The subjects are 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50. Just normal, everyday dudes. The subjects range in occupation from corporation presidents to good humor men and plumbers. And he ran them through something like what you and I just did. He would have each subject sit down at a table. I'll see you right here. in front of this really impressive-looking machine that had lots of switches on it. It generates electric shocks. When you press one of the switches all the way down, the learner gets a shock. And in the other room, there was a guy who he called the learner who was supposed to have memorized some words. And every time that guy got a word wrong, like you just did, which happened constantly, the volunteer was instructed to shock that guy with higher and higher voltage. Now, the volunteer couldn't see the guy he was shocking, but he could definitely hear them. Milgram staged the whole thing like it was some experiment about memory and punishment, but of course it wasn't about that. It was about how far would these people go? How many times would they shock that sad sap in the next room just because they were being told to? The guy yelling, of course, was an actor, and the shocks weren't real, but the questions in the air at the time were very real. Prosecution, Attorney General. This was a moment when human cruelty was on trial. Quite literally. When I stand before you, judges of Israel, in this court, to accuse Adolf Eichmann, I do not stand alone. So Stanley Milgram actually begins these experiments the same year that Adolf Eichmann goes on trial for Nazi war crimes. That's radio producer Ben Walker. He'll be our guide for this segment. And in the trial, when the prosecutors essentially ask him how you came to commit genocide, he would say over and over again, It was not my personal affair. I was just following orders. I had to do what I was ordered. And it's this defense. This is basically what Stanley Milgram set out to test. 285 volts. In a lab at Yale University with a bunch of regular Americans. Like, is that something that's universal? Yeah. Or just an Eichmann thing? Yeah. He figured maybe 1% of these men would keep flicking the switches up to the highest voltage, but that's not what he found. 65% were willing to shock their fellow citizens over and over again, even past when they were screaming in pain. Something's happened to that man then. Even when they stopped screaming? Yeah, when they were maybe dead. You better check in on him, sir. He won't answer me or nothing. Please continue. Go on, please. They continued shocking their corpses. His experiment remains one of the most famous experiments of the 20th century. In 1962, Stanley Milgram shocked the world with his study on obedience. It is still trotted out to explain everything from hazing to war crimes. What is there in human nature? To gang behavior. That allows an individual to act inhumanely. Genocide. Harshly. It's like a downloadable from the internet instant defense for doing wrong. But if you look at Milgram's work closely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this guy did. Alex Haslam, professor of psychology at the University of Exeter. Then a different picture will emerge. Really, that story has been told a million and one times for the last 50 years. We've just got to get over it. Now, what you need to understand about Alex Haslam is that he hates it when interviewers only want to talk about the baseline study. The one that everybody knows, the so-called baseline. The 65% one. The one we just talked about. Yeah. So there's more? There's more to it? Yeah, because actually he studied between 20 and 40 different variants of this same paradigm. Stanley Milgram took electric shocks very seriously. He did this experiment a bunch of times and in a bunch of different ways. He had all sorts of different things. He would change where the shocker and the shock he sat. He had women participants. He had an experimenter who wasn't a scientist but was a member of the general public. And every scenario produced a different result. Really? Yep. Let me, I mean, I'm just, I've got in front of me, I've just got the data from the Milgram study. Let me just get that out. So again, the baseline study is the one where 65% of the volunteers go all the way. Highest dose of electricity. But in experiment number three, if they put the shocker in the same room with the shocker, so the shocker could actually see the person that he's shocking. Obedience drops to about 40%. In an experiment number four, when the teacher has to hold the learner's hand down on a plate in order for him to feel the shocks, it drops to about 30%. Wow. Experiment 14. If the experimenter is not a scientist, but is an ordinary man, not wearing a white coat, obedience drops to 20%. Oh. Really? Well, how low can we go? Okay. Here's another one. This variant. Experiment 17. There's you and there's two other participants. Both actors. If those two participants refuse to go on. Like saying, like, I don't want to kill a guy. Only 10% under those circumstances go on. And then the final one. Experiment 15. Of course, normally you just have one experimenter who's giving you these instructions. But if you put two experimenters in the room and. They start disagreeing with each other. And this one, you get 0% going all the way. Zero in that condition. You said zero. None go right to the end. No, no, not one person. No one Not a soul Exactly 0 Well alright I starting to feel a little bit better about my fellow man one second hey hey hey hey okay where is he i i in a closet in a closet because this room is echoey and you know there's nothing like a closet full of clothes to like help balance that out that's true that's true all right so keep going so you see it's just in that one experiment that 65 of people are willing to go all the way but in all of these other scenarios they don't. And even when they do say yes, even when they go along with the experiment, as you can see in the film, they struggle. Continue using the last switch on the board, please. I'm not getting no answer. Please continue. The next word is white. They have debates with themselves. Don't you think you should look in on them, please? Debates with the experimenter. Not once we've started the experiment. But what if something's happened and they may have an attack or something there? The experiment requires that we continue. Go on, please. Don't demands help mean anything? Whether the learner likes it or But he might be dead in there. What's interesting is that how all of these struggles, all of them, play out the same way. It's the experimenter prodding the shockers along. You're going to keep giving, what, 450 volts every shot now? That's correct. For me, it's all about the prods. The next word is white. This is what totally pulled me into this story, the prods. Stanley Milgram had four scripted prods that he wrote out for his experimenters. For when the subjects didn't want to continue? Yep. The first one was, please go on. And if they didn't go on, if they resisted, the experimenter would break out prod number two. The experiment requires that you continue. And if they still were resisting or struggling, they'd get prod number three. It's a little bit more direct. It's a bit stronger, but it's not an order. Not quite. But the fourth prod... Really, the critical fourth prod... ...is in absolute order. The fourth prod is... You have no other choice, teacher. You have no other choice, teacher. You must continue. That is definitely in order. Exactly. But every time the experimenter pulled out the fourth prod... And this was confirmed when the experiment was redone in 2006. Total disobedience. Total disobedience. Any time the experimenter said you must continue, the shocker would say, hell no, I don't. You had no other choice, teacher. I have a choice. I'm not going to go ahead with it. Well, we'll have to discontinue the experiment then. I'm sorry. Here's another one. You had no other choice. You must go ahead. I have a choice. That is, if you don't continue, we're going to have to discontinue the experiment. after he says cut it out after all he knows what he can stand that's my opinion that's what i'm gonna stand on it wow so the subjects seem willing to shock another human being but as soon as you say it's an order they don't do it now that's important it's very important because if you ask university undergraduates what does the milgram study show they will invariably say something like they show that people obey orders okay well actually the one thing that the study really doesn't show is that people obey orders and it's a pretty big thing to miss it's a pretty big thing to miss isn't it really so wait if it doesn't show that people are just obeying orders yeah then what does it show okay i think it looks it's like this all right let's go into our instructions we will begin with this test the participants are there and they're in the study each pair of words they've got a very plausible very credible high status scientist in a high status scientific institution. Yale. Who is going to do this powerful piece of science. Direct your voice toward that microphone. So they sit down in the chair thinking, wow, this is really important. I'm about to help this quest for knowledge. I really want to do a good job. Now, as we sort of know in life, lots of things that we do, if they're worthwhile doing, are not always easy. And you find yourself in a situation where you've got to do something that's hard. Like shocking an innocent stranger over and over. But if you think that's the right thing, if you think that science is worth pursuing, you say, OK, I'll go along with this. So you're saying they're shocking these people because they thought it was worthwhile? Look, the participants, you know, they're not it's not it's not just blind obedience. Oh, you tell me, sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Three bags full, sir. They're engaged with the task. They're trying to be good participants. Are you all right? They're trying to do the right thing. They're not doing something because they have to. They're doing it because they think they ought to. And that's all the difference in the world. Suddenly I'm thinking this is actually a darker interpretation than the original. Absolutely darker. Because they are doing it. No question about it. They have the agency. Yep. And they think it's right. Although clearly on some level they know it isn't. There's a sort of chilling comparison, which is a speech that Himmler gave to the SS, some SS leaders, when they were about to commit a range of atrocities. He said, look, this is what you're going to do is, of course you don't want to do this. Of course, nobody wants to be killing other people. We realize this is hard work, but what you're doing is for the good of Germany, and this is necessary in order to advance our noble cause. Wow. So then... Hey, wait, I'm almost done, guys. Give me two more minutes. Two more minutes. So in the Milgram case, well, if the idea is that people will do bad if they think it's good, it's a good noble cause, well, what's the noble cause in this case? Science. Science. You can see this in the surveys that the men filled out after the experiments were over. This was exactly what was on my mind. If the experiment had to be successful, it had to be carried on. The questionnaires they filled out are part of the Milgram archive at Yale. Willing to help in a worthwhile experiment. And it's kind of surprising. A lot of them are really positive, even though they've just been told that they were duped. Research in any field is a must, particularly in this day and age. Do you think that more studies of this sort should be carried out? Definitely yes. We, as onlookers to the study, we have this kind of godlike sort of vision of like, well, of course what they're doing is wrong. but if we looked at from another perspective there is a sense in which you could celebrate what they're doing I mean I'm not suggesting one should but I'm just saying there is a sense in which these people are prepared to do something that's very painful to them and to someone else because they want to promote science well you know you can see that's a good thing I mean you know I'm giving god because it's like we started with this experiment that we all see as evidence of humans latent capacity for evil can you tell us actually no under some circumstances, we don't do the bad thing we're told to do because, here's another flip, we don't have to be told. In fact, we hate being told, but we will do it on our own if we think it's good. Now you're saying, actually, that you could read that, that very dark fact, as being actually evidence of something quite noble. Well, if you dressed it up and if you just had some minor variants of the paradigm, you could presumably make this out. These are people who are incredibly noble. They are. I mean, it's the fact, of course, that they're administering pain to a stranger. That's what's horrifying about it. But imagine they were administering pain themselves. Imagine they really were, had to administer shocks themselves or something. But if they were prepared to do that, and I suspect a lot of them would, then we'd say these are people who really believe in science. And isn't this a good thing that we have people in our society who are willing to make sacrifices for the greater good? So in the end, where do you come down? Do you leave this experiment in a light mood or in a dark mood? Overall? I would say in a powerful mood. We're close to some really fundamental truths about human nature. And, you know, my views about human nature are that it affords infinite potentials for lightness and dark. There's lots and lots of lessons here. But one is, I think, you know, when you're enjoined to do something for the greater good, maybe ask yourself the question, what is greater and what is good? Oh, that right there. I've slapped some quotations around that. Yeah. Thanks to Ben Walker. Thank you, Ben. And also thank you to Alex Haslam, Professor of Psychology at the University of Exeter. Be right back. Big news. Radiolab is headed to the Tribeca Festival podcast stage for a special live show in NYC. We'll be headlining the podcast program with this one-night-only live show at the festival's 25th anniversary. Come out on June 9th. I think I can safely promise that it will be sweeter than anything you have ever seen or heard. Tickets are available now at tribecafilm.com slash audio. That's tribecafilm.com slash audio. Oh, okay. They're going to record it over there. I mean, I'm going to record it here, too. All right, 3, 2, 1. Hey, I'm Jad Abumran. I'm Robert Krillwich. This is Radiolab. And today, evil. Although, I don't know if that's the right word for this next thing. Yeah, because it's sort of more complicated. When you call someone evil, then you're kind of done with them. But there's been a fellow. I've been thinking about him for a better part of the year, as you know. He's such a puzzle to me. I can't quite place him. Though it's very fun to try. And I heard about him from science writer Sam Keen. Well, let's talk about Fritz Haber. So first of all, could you just like, when did he live and what did he look like and that kind of stuff? He was doing his great science work right around the turn of the 20th century, so right around 1900. Very distinctive looking man, bald on top, trim, nice mustache, wore a little piznez, is that how you say that? I call it princenez, I'm not sure. Okay, one of those very tiny old-fashioned pair of glasses that would pinch on your nose. And he was someone who had very big ambitions. Just to put that in context, to bring a few other of our storytellers in. He comes from Breslau, Germany. That's Fred Kaufman, reporter. Which is a fairly small, you know, a smaller sort of town. And so does Clara. That's Fritz Haber's wife. We're going to meet her later. Right, Clara comes from the same town. And they're both secularized Jews. But this was a moment in German history, he says, when Jews had a decent amount of freedom. And this is the difference between Kaiser Wilhelm and, of course, Hitler's Germany. Yeah, to put it in context. Dan Charles, he's a historian. His was the first generation when a young Jewish boy could truly imagine that he could just be a regular part of that society. He could do anything. And he believed it. Fast forward 10 years, Fritz Haber is a professor. Small university. He's working with chemicals. It's about 1880. And he throws himself at one of the central issues facing Germany at that time. Germany has a problem. A big problem. It has enough what they used to call then solar energy. You know, energy from the sun to grow crops. to feed about 30 million people. However, that leaves behind 20 million Germans. You mean they're looking at 20 million people going hungry? That's what we're heading towards. I mean, you have to remember, during the Crimean War in the 1850s, Europe starves. So around the turn of the century, for German scientists like Haber, this was the challenge. He wants to feed. He wants to feed Germany. And actually, this wasn't just a German thing. A lot of people were beginning to worry that with about a billion and a half people on the planet at that point, that maybe we were maxing out, that the Earth couldn't support this many people. And everyone thought, well, we know the solution. Yeah, we just need a whole lot more of one simple element. Nitrogen. Nitrogen. Nitrogen. Nitrogen. They needed more. Nitrogen. Nitrogen is an essential part of amino acids and proteins. And when you stick a seed, like a wheat seed, in the ground. One of the reasons it grows is because it's sucking up all the nitrogen in the soil. To make it sell walls. Without nitrogen, you don't have life. Now, of course, you could find some nitrogen out in the world. Natural deposits would be like seaweed or... Manure was one. You know, you could find it in cow manure or... Juano. Which was basically... Bat poop and seagull poop. Which made that poop valuable. And actually two nations in South America went to war. Literally over bat s**t. You could say people were bat s**t crazy. By the way, that's reporter Latif Nasser. You know, this was like oil is today. This is... Everybody was desperate for sources, new sources of nitrogen, and to make the problem even more annoying? The most common source of nitrogen is in the air around us. It makes up four out of every five or so molecules that we breathe, so it's very... This is a lot. Yes, 80% of the air is nitrogen atoms. So all the nitrogen you'd ever need was right there. You can't like throw that air onto a plant. They couldn't deploy it. They couldn't deploy it. Meaning they couldn't capture it. That's right. And part of the problem here, and although once again we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. We'll be right back to Hopper, but wait, wait, let's just finish this. Is that nitrogen is trivalent. Trivalent. Trivalent. In other words, nitrogen has really strong attachments to itself. What he means is that when nitrogen atoms are just free-floating in the air, they will cling to each other. These little nitrogen atoms will fiercely hold together, and it's almost impossible to pry them apart. His calculations showed that it couldn't be done. At least not without a tremendous amount of energy. More energy than seemed like possible to make. Yeah, yes, but, you know. Being ambitious. Haber starts thinking, in order to do this, we need to pressure this. We need to put it under a lot of pressure. So he starts experimenting. He figures out a way to take a lot of air that's filled with these little nitrogen bonds clinging to each other and pump it to a big iron tank under extreme, extreme pressure at high temperature. And then he forces hydrogen into the tank. Get in there! And you have a number of chemical reactions. And what happens is that you're elbowing the nitrogen apart from itself and then forcing it to bond with the hydrogen in a new way. And when hydrogen and nitrogen bond together, the thing you get... Is ammonia. A liquid that has captured the nitrogen right out of the air. You literally get a drip, drip, drip of ammonia. It is arguably the most significant scientific breakthrough of them all. Bread from the air was the phrase. Because Hopper had figured out a way to take nitrogen from the air, put it into the barren ground, and grew wheat. This has allowed the world to have 7 billion people. This is what's driving the world towards 10, 12 by 2050. Now we're seeing about 100 million tons of synthetic fertilizer produced industrially each year, and that tonnage then moves into our food source. Our food source then moves into our bodies. And the rough statistics are that half of each of our bodies contains nitrogen from the Haber process. No, really. And so in 1918, Fritz Haber gets a Nobel Prize. But this is why this is such an interesting guy. Around this same time, officials in the U.S. government are calling him a war criminal. All right, just to back up for one second. After Haber's nitrogen discovery... He was promoted. You know, he takes over the leadership of this institute in Berlin, and he starts hobnobbing with a whole different level of society. That's Stan Charles again. I mean, it's a pretty heady thing for, you know, a Jewish kid from Breslau to be hobnobbing with the emperor and cabinet ministers. He's part of the club, and he really, really relished it. And not just because he was vain, which everyone agrees he was, but because he loves his country. He loves the fatherland and he loves Germany. So when World War I begins, he signs up immediately, sends a letter volunteering for duty saying, you know the process that I use to make food? Well, I can use that same process to make explosives. Because the thing that you put into the ground to grow more food is also the thing you can explode to make a bomb That correct Because it takes such energy and pressure to separate it this trivalent bond is so strong that when it comes back together that energy that's released, it could be used for life or death. In any case, back to World War I. There's trench warfare, it gets bogged down, and Haber has an idea. He goes straight to the German I command and he pitches this idea. He says, well, we can drive those enemy soldiers out of trenches with gas. Chlorine gas. We'll basically bring it to the front and when the wind is right, we'll just spray it. But the generals were not all that convinced. No. They just didn't like it. A lot of them were like, this is not how you fight a war. It's like playing dirty. Yeah. Sort of unsportsmanlike. But he organizes soldiers. He organizes whole gas units. And nobody even had to ask. Takes command of them partially. He travels to the front. And on April 22nd. 1915? In 1915. Haber finds himself in a little town in Belgium called Ypres. Y-P-R-E-S. Actually, the Americans called it Ypres. Whatever you call it. This was one of the bloodiest arenas on the Western Front. The Germans were on one side, the French, the Canadians, and the British on the other. And there, behind the German lines, is... Our friend. Our frenemy. Fritz Haber, our friend of mine. He's bald. He has a pot belly. He has these Ponce Nez spectacles. He's chomping on a Virginian cigar. He was always smoking these Virginian cigars. And he's wearing a fur coat in what is basically like the Baghdad of his time. But nobody had done what he was about to do on the scale that he was about to do it. So basically at 6 p.m. on April 22nd. When the wind was just right, he says. Haber's gas troops unscrew. They open the valves on almost 6,000 tanks containing 150 tons of chlorine. That's like an adult blue whale of chlorine. I'm just trying to imagine that. Is that like a green cloud? Some people describe it as a cloud, and then others describe it as this kind of 15-foot wall, kind of hugging the land, and it's just sort of approaching. And it's moving at about one meter per second. And according to some accounts, as it crept across no man's land... The leaves would just sort of shrivel, and the grass was turning to the color of metal. Birds would just fall from the air. Within minutes, the gas reached the Allied side, and as soon as it did... Soldiers began to convulse. They were gagging, they were choking, hundreds of them were falling to the ground. What is the gas doing to them exactly? I think what it's doing is it's, if you breathe it in, it sort of irritates your lungs to the extent that they sort of, fills up with fluid so quickly that you sort of drown in your own phlegm. So they were actually drowning? Literally drowning on land. Wow. Yellow mucus was frothing out of their mouths. Those who could still breathe would turn blue. This is a description of hell. Yeah. But Haber saw it as a wonderful success and wished that the Germans had been better prepared to exploit it. Because he felt like they really could have made a terrific advance if they had had more confidence. And he is celebrated for it. He gets promoted to the rank of captain. And he goes home for a few days a hero. But when he gets there, he has to contend with his wife. Clara Imervar. Clara. Also from Breslau, also from a Jewish family, and also a scientist, unusually so in those times. She was actually sort of a genius herself. She was one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in her country. And shortly after his return, Clara allegedly confronts him and says, look, you are morally bankrupt. How could you? But Haber just kind of ignored her and... According to legend... He actually threw a dinner party. in celebration of the big victory, invited his friends over. Now, we don't actually know if he threw a party. I consider that apocryphal. Dan doesn't think so. But what's clear is that he saw no reason to question what he had done, and that infuriated Clara. Especially because she found out he was leaving the next day to direct more gas attacks. And they probably had an argument. Yeah. And that was a good argument. That's historian Fritz Stern, who also happens to be Fritz Haber's godson. They had a quarrel. More than that. Let's call it a fight. And later that night, After the party, Haber takes a bunch of sleeping pills, goes to sleep, and she takes his service revolver. Fritz Haber's pistol. Walks outside to the garden. And pulls the trigger. Shoots herself in the chest. And is found by her son. By her son? Yes. Age 13, I think. And he finds her actually still alive, with the life about to run out of her. Uh, Haber, it's unknown what happens for the rest of that evening, but it is a well-documented fact that the very next morning... On schedule, he goes back to the front. To the eastern front. Leaving his son, uh, alone with his dead mother. That's... Cold, huh? Yeah. Heartless. It was a terrible moment. Did he run away? Was it duty? The son eventually, after he emigrates to America, kills himself. See, now around this point, I just don't want to have anything to do with this guy. I just want to take a shower and walk away. Yeah, me too. You know, on the other hand, I mean, if you look at the grand calculus, people he's helped or fed versus people he's killed. I mean, he's fed billions of people. I don't know that you could entirely call him bad. I might even tilt towards saying he's a little good, to be honest. You wouldn't, though. Would you really? Would you really think that this guy's a good guy? Honestly, yeah. You know, just because of a mathematical summing up? We're talking billions of people. He's standing there on the front pushing the gas into the lungs of other human beings. Admittedly, it's a war, but still. Then he goes and celebrates that and then walks away from his child and his wife dead in the garden and says, more of that, please. Well, there's something distasteful about the fact that he was too into it. But I do think on some level you have to divorce the man from his deeds. And you've got to ask, is the world better with him or without him? I think you've got to answer it with him. Right? Well. Should we keep going with the story? Yeah. All right. So, Sam, what happened to this guy after World War I? He actually was very humiliated that Germany had lost and especially humiliated over the fact that they had to pay enormous war reparations to other countries. So he decided he was going to invent a process to pay for these reparations by himself. And what he decided to do is go into the ocean, into seawater, which contains very small levels of gold. But, you know, over the entire ocean, there's a lot of gold dissolved into the sea. And he spends five years in a futile effort to distill gold from the ocean's waters. Sounds insane. On the other hand, if anyone could do it. He was trying to repeat this master stroke. Needless to say. He fails. It was actually a crushing blow for him. And then things really take a turn. 1933 comes, and Hitler takes over. And one of the first acts that the Nazis do is to basically issue an order that says, there shall be no Jews in the civil service. Now, Haber was Jewish, but because he'd served in World War I, he technically would be exempt. But 75% of the people who worked for him at the Institute, they were Jewish. and they would have to be dismissed. So he decides to take a stand. And says, this is intolerable. I'm going to resign. He says that he's always been hiring people based on how smart they are and not who their grandparents were. So he sends a letter to the Ministry of Education resigning and he leaves Germany. Telling a friend he felt like he'd lost his homeland. And then he starts this period of roaming. He eventually goes to England. But in a famous incident, one of England's leading scientists, refuses to shake his hand. And he is basically homeless at this point. You know, he's a man adrift. Meanwhile... His health is failing. In 1934, he takes a trip to Switzerland to a sanatorium. But before he can get there... His heart fails, and he dies. Now, there's a footnote to this that is very strange. I got a little... My dorsal hair stood up when I read the end of this. Right. So during World War I, Haber's Institute had developed a formulation of insect-killing gas called Zyklon. Zyklon A. Which was originally just a pesticide. Once again, another nitrogen compound. It was developed in his institute. He knew about it. In fact, his chemists had given this particular pesticide a smell. It was a warning smell so that people didn't inadvertently breathe it in and get sick. But after the Nazis take over... This is after he died. They reach back to the shelf and they find this Zyklon stuff. And they ask for it to be reformulated to take out the warning smell. And it becomes Zyklon B, the killing gas of the concentration camps. Did members of Haber's family die in the concentration camps? Yeah, members of his extended family did. Certainly friends of his did. There's something deeply, deeply wounding, distressing, upsetting at the thought that he had anything to do with Cyclone B. But he did. The use of it, he couldn't have imagined. So, how do you feel about him now? Because, I don't know, I can't help but feel bad for the guy. despite the chlorine gas, he didn't intend for that to happen. He could have never imagined that. No, but there's part of me that says, you know, here's a guy who just wanted to do everything better than it had ever been done before, whether it was feeding or killing. And he does. And he does. But he does it with a kind of amoral athleticism. He does it without humility, without a lot of doubt. And it's a craft, but it's a craft with confidence. consequences, and to approach it with kind of crazy joy? I don't know. I would rather have scientists who carry doubt with them as they proceed. Yeah, I agree with that. Maybe it's all about doubt in the end. Thanks to all our great storytellers, Dan Charles, Sam Keen, Latif Nasser, Fred Kaufman, and Fritz Stern. You can find out more information about all those guys on our website, radiolab.org. Hi, Lulu here, and this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as someone who reports on mental health, who likes talking to people about their mental health and what they look to in science, in the natural world, in faith, in friendship, wherever it may be to help guide them through the rough patches of life, I just wanted to take a moment to say What seems to help people turn corners, find relief, get out of ruts, and even flourish is having someone with you. As much as we can feel private about our mental health struggles, you do not have to go it alone. So this May, why not treat your mental health to a buddy? And who better to talk to than a fully licensed mental health therapist? With over 30,000 therapists available, BetterHelp has someone you can talk to available at pretty much any time that's convenient for you at the push of a button. And because finding the help you need often depends on the therapist-client vibe, rest assured, with BetterHelp, you can switch providers at any time. Remember, truly, your mental health matters, and you don't have to go it alone. Find the support you need anytime with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash Radiolab. That's BetterHelp.com slash Radiolab. Big news. Radiolab is headed to the Tribeca Festival podcast stage for a special live show in NYC. We'll be headlining the podcast program with this one-night-only live show at the festival's 25th anniversary. Come out on June 9th. I think I can safely promise that it will be sweeter than anything you have ever seen or heard. Tickets are available now at tribecafilm.com slash audio. That's TribecaFilm.com slash audio Hey, I'm Jad Abumran I'm Robert Krolwitz This is Radiolab And today we're talking about Well, we're trying to think about What goes on in the mind of a bad person What makes a bad person so bad That he's different from the rest of us And we didn't really come to any kind of agreement With the Haber thing I don't think we quite know But you know, we ended up walking this question around To different people We want to talk about bad people in Shakespeare And oddly enough, we got a really interesting take on the true nature of badness from this guy. James Shapiro, professor of English at Columbia University. And he said, to start, you want to know about bad? I'll give you bad. In Titus Andronicus, there's a character by the name of Aaron the Moor. There's a moment in the play where Aaron gets up on stage, looks at the audience and says, let me just tell you the kinds of things I've been up to recently. Set deadly enmity between two friends. Make poor men's cattle break their necks. set fire on barns and haystacks in the night, and bid the owners quench them with their tears. Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves and set them upright at their dear friend's door, even when their sorrows almost were forgot, and on their skins is on the bark of trees, have with my life, with my knife, carved in Roman letters, let not your sorrows die, though I am dead. Whoa. So he's bad. Yeah, but see, here's the interesting thing. According to James, he's not the baddest in Shakespeare or in life because ultimately the play offers up a reason for his nastiness. The reason why he's telling all this stuff is because he has cut a deal. They will spare his son if he fesses up and tells them what they need to know. So there's a way in which there's a touch, a spark of humanity. Just a little glimmer. And he says that's what people wanted. They wanted someone who was really thrillingly bad, but in the end was redeemed a bit. This wasn't just a theater thing. No, because if you couldn't afford a ticket for a play, you'd seen all the plays. In the 1500s, you could always go to a public hanging. You'd go for much the same reasons. In those days, if you're a convicted male felon, you are, you know, strung up, but you're not allowed to hang until you die. You're cut down before then. Warning, this next part's a little graphic. Then the executioner castrates you, cuts you open, and takes out your internal organs and then separates your head, which is put on a post. But even with all that gore and horribleness, there was often a moment that people waited for. And in a way, we wait for it still, even now. We want what Elizabethans got at the scaffold, which was a confession. Before the guy is cut to shreds, he's allowed to confess. You know, I hardly, you know, regret the fact that I killed the young maiden or defamed the king, whatever it is. The expectation is somebody is made to make his peace with his maker before he dies That what you do And that what Shakespeare did in all his plays He would give all his baddies at least one moment where they could be understood Except this one time So will I turn her virtue into bitch. Iago. He is a soldier. He works for a general. The general's name is Othello. They're supposedly chums, but General Othello has no idea that Iago... I hate. Hates him. I'm a fool. So he plans to destroy Othello. Now, we don't exactly know why. There are hints of reasons. Like maybe he thinks Othello's sleeping with his wife. We're not sure. But the weird thing is that he decides not just to take down Othello, but everybody. I know not what he did. What? What? Lied. He stirs up hatred between friends, between lovers. He even schemes against his own wife. This is just somebody who's performing brain surgery without anesthesia on other people. He's a master plotter. And as for why? Maybe Othello was sleeping with Amelia. But as the play goes on, you begin to think that maybe that's just another lie. Eventually, Iago convinces Othello that his wife has been disloyal, which she hasn't. And then Othello goes and kills his own wife. smothering her with a pillow. This is just a tsunami of evil that passes through the play. Tester woman's dead. Tester woman's dead. And at the very end of the play, when everyone finds out what Iago's done, a fellow asks him, why? Why did you do this? And Iago? He refuses what we fully expect and what everybody on stage at that moment fully expects from him. You know, what does he say? Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth, I never will speak word. I'm not saying a word. I'm not going to give you what you want. I'm not going to help restore the sense that there is a moral order to the world and a moral norm. What you know, you know. If this is the singular moment in Shakespeare where he gives you an un-understandably evil man, no motives, no reason, any idea what the hell he was intending? What you know, you know. Meaning, any idea what was in his mind? Was he trying to make a commentary on something? Was he grappling with something? Do we know? What you know, you know. Damn it! The good Iagos make you want to shower the minute you leave the theater because you are sullied by them. Thank you to James Shapiro, whose most recent book is called Contested Will. You know what? He has you there. Yeah, well, you know what I'm left thinking, though, is like if you could somehow, I mean, that was make-believe, but if you could somehow get a real Iago in the room and subject that person to questioning and really get them to sort of fess up as to why they did it, would that make a difference? We should say that this next section of the program has some references which are extremely graphic and not to everybody's taste. So if you have kids in the room, maybe this is a time to tell them to go brush their teeth or something. Yeah, yeah. It comes to us from our reporter, Aaron Spahn. Yes, Jeff Jensen. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. All right, so who is this guy we're hearing? This is Jeff Jensen, and he's a reporter in L.A., and he wrote this graphic novel that I read about one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history. Gary Leon Ridgeway. The Green River Killer. The first victims of the Green River Killer were found in the summer of 1982. The Green River murders terrorized Seattle in the 1980s. In Seattle today, a man called the Green River Killer... Ridgeway murdered at least 49 women. The so-called Green River Killer... But it's suspected that it could be upwards of 75. Making him the most prolific serial killer in American history. All the victims were prostitutes. He buried them or left their bodies in these little clumps in the woods. The killers seem to have placed the bodies as if they were mannequins. And in January of 1984, the Green River Task Force was formed. And my father was recruited to the task force. So Jeff wrote this book because his father, Tom Jensen, was one of the lead detectives tracking Gary Ridgway. He ultimately spent 17 years searching for this man. In December of 2001, my father and his colleagues make the arrest. DNA testing matched him to the crime. They arrest Gary Leon Ridgway. And on June 13, 2003, Gary was secretly taken out of his jail cell and brought to a sort of very nondescript, concrete, ugly office building. And over the next six months, from June to early December, it was Tom's job to get Gary to open up and give up the few details that they really needed to link him certifiably to all these crimes. Today's date is June 17th. The year 2003, the time now is 08.36 hours. So every day they would bring him into this conference room. This is a continuation of an interview with Gary Leon Ridgway. And interrogate him. What have you remembered since we last talked yesterday? I got those all at night, mostly. I remember picking her up. It immediately became apparent that there was going to be difficulties. As far as I know, I don't know if I did or not. He would deny things, he would obscure, he would dance around things. He didn't really want a cop to everything that he did. I got to tell you, I'm not totally comfortable that you're providing all the information. Especially when it came to one particular fact. What my father and his colleagues know is that something was done to these bodies, many of them, after they were murdered. Is he saying what I think he's saying? Yeah. Necrophilia. Gary is dancing around this topic. Gary had denied this to his own lawyers. so my father and the other interviewer in that room that morning, Detective John Mattson they start using a line of a tact of interviewing him that was very stunningly shockingly empathetic nothing to be ashamed of thousands of people have done it before you you're not the first one you're not the first person that's ever done this I'm not going to be the last one. You won't be the last? That's one of the things that we need to know. The father's trying to reach out to him. Okay. I know it was more than a urge. It's okay to admit this. You need to admit this. It's all right. But we've got to know that. That's one of the things we have to know. And that's why it's okay to let it out. And he does. Yes, I did lie about that. That's when I was, I went back one time before, and I, like I said, I've got to give it out. I can't keep holding it. No, it's building up. This is a major breakthrough. So he ends up admitting it. In graphic detail. And it gets even more disturbing for my father as the conversation suddenly pivots to another victim. Other than one. Dad was real close to me. By the name of Carol Christensen. Christensen, I dated her several times before, three times, two times before. He brings her up as an example of a woman that he actually had strong feelings for. You liked this girl? I really liked her. She was good to you. She was good to me. And as it happens, my father has very vivid memories of investigating the Carol Christensen murder, speaking with Carol's mom, Carol's little daughter. Killed her. She was, I knew she had a daughter. And so Gary starts going through this narrative of what he did to Carol. The last time she was in a hurry. She like was allegedly in a rush. And she didn't. And like it kind of like hurt his feelings. Wasn't satisfying me. It made me mad because she was very much in a hurry. She had something else on her mind. and I killed her. What did you kill her? I choked her with my arm. And the way I killed her, I cared for her because I dated her before, but this didn't turn out right. Up until that point, Gary refused to say that from the minute I picked these women up, I wanted to kill them. He claimed they were in the middle of a sex act. He would get distracted. Something would happen. He just kind of went crazy. he had snapped and almost like blaming the victims. And my father wasn't buying it. The fact that he kept on doing it over and over and over again was like, come on. You've been through this a lot of times before and she's already told you she's in a hurry. You knew what was going to happen. And you've done this how many times before? 10, 10, 15, 20 times. You know what's going to happen if she pisses you off. and you like her. You're telling us all this. Yes. Yet you go into this anyway, knowing full well that it could end up in her death. Yeah. And Gary just says, Yes. That is true. When I picked them up, I was going to kill them. Finally acknowledging, Yeah, that's true. There's a pause and my father just says, Why? Why? why did you do this? Did you need to kill? And that was a question that had haunted my father for decades. Why? In that why, in that one simple why that he asked Gary, there was a lot of questions he was asking. Why did you inflict all this suffering on them, on us? Why did you take these women off the streets and want to destroy them? Why? Why? Why? And the answer is unsatisfying. Yes, I did need to kill her because of that. Wait, what? I just needed to kill because of that. And then he just trails off. I need to kill because of that? That's it? You know, I just wanted to kill them. I just needed to kill them. In that moment, my father, he stands up and he says, You've touched me. You've touched me, Gary. You've touched me. Take a break. Okay, we're going off tape now. It's 0924 hours on June 17th, year 2003. He walked out of the room and just started weeping. They spent the next six months interrogating him. They brought in psychiatrists and forensic psychologists to try to get an answer. Gary says, I needed to kill, and they go, why? And he says, because of the rage. And, well, why the rage? And because women have stepped on me all my life. Well, why can't you deal with it in a normal way? Each answer just begs another why. And even though in the end they got him to confess to these 49 murders, they never really get any closer to an answer than this first one. That afternoon, he gets in his car, goes home. He finds my mom on the deck, sits down next to her. She says, what happened today? My dad said, I don't want to talk about it. and to this day they have not talked about that day and he hasn't talked about it with anyone until I interviewed him for the book. And why is it so important do you think to understand the why behind such an evil act? Well, the thing that haunts me about the why question is that I'm reminded of like one of the oldest stories in the Bible which is the story of Job. The story of Job is that one day God and Satan are having a conversation and they're saying, have you checked out Job? You know, I'm really proud of Job. He believes in me and he trusts me so much and he has such great faith in me. And Satan is like, I bet I can change his mind. And so Satan basically systematically destroys Job's life, takes away his wife, his children, all his material possessions. What follows is this ongoing conversation between Job and his friends about why does this happen? Why does God allow this to happen? Only then does God speak up and kind of say, like, you're going to question me? Like, you know, who are you? My point is, sometimes when we ask the why in the face of profound evil, I kind of wonder if what we're doing is that we're daring God to show himself. And I think what we want out of the why is meaning, meaning to life, to reveal itself in a way that restores order and gives us hope that all of this isn't just meaningless chaos. Thank you. Jeff Jensen's book is The Green River Killer, a true detective story. It's a graphic or an illustrated novel. Thanks also to reporter Aaron Scott for that story. This is Radiolab. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Gabby. I'm from the Bay Area, California, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soran Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nainasambandan, Matt Keelty, Mona Modgauker, Alex Neeson, Sarah Kari, Natalia Ramirez, Rebecca Rand, Anissa Vitsa, Arian Wack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Gabby Santus. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Anjali Mercado, and Sophie Semayi. Hi, this is Evan. I'm calling from Menlo Park, California. Leadership support for The Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. WNYC's journalism and storytelling is heard by millions of passionate listeners. Sponsors of our programming gain our listeners' attention and their respect. Learn about how your organization can support WNYC and WNYC Studios at sponsorship.wnyc.org.