When Things Fall Apart

Summary

Throughline: "When Things Fall Apart" – Episode Summary

Released on April 10, 2025, the Throughline episode titled "When Things Fall Apart" delves deep into the enduring debate about human nature and the fragile veneer of civilization. Hosted by NPR’s Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei, the episode navigates historical theories, infamous psychological experiments, and real-world disasters to challenge conventional beliefs about inherent human brutality.

---

1. The Thin Veneer Theory and Human Nature

The episode opens with Rutger Bregman recounting a poignant parable:

Rutger Bregman [00:21]: "What we assume in other people is what we get out of them. Our view of human nature tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Bregman introduces the Veneer Theory, a longstanding belief rooted in Western culture that posits civilization as a thin layer masking our inherently selfish and brutal instincts. This theory suggests that without societal structures—like governments and laws—humans would revert to chaos and violence.

2. The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Pillar of the Veneer Theory

A significant portion of the episode critiques the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1971. The experiment aimed to observe the psychological effects of perceived power by assigning participants roles of guards and prisoners in a simulated prison environment.

Rutger Bregman [22:27]: "The Stanford Prison Experiment is the most famous experiment in the history of psychology... They turn into monsters."

The SPE has been widely cited as evidence supporting the Veneer Theory, showcasing how ordinary individuals can exhibit extreme cruelty when placed in positions of authority. However, the episode challenges this interpretation by uncovering previously overlooked aspects of the experiment.

3. Re-examining the Stanford Prison Experiment

Rutger Bregman discusses the revelations from a French study titled "The History of a Lie," which scrutinized the SPE's methodology and findings.

Rutger Bregman [27:33]: "They were being pressured all the time to behave as nasty and sadistic as possible."

Findings indicated that the extreme behavior exhibited by participants was not solely a product of their inherent nature but was significantly influenced by the experimenters' interventions and expectations. This manipulation undermines the validity of SPE as conclusive evidence for the Veneer Theory.

4. The BBC Prison Experiment: A Modern Replication

In 2001, the BBC attempted to replicate the SPE for a reality TV show, involving Professors Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher. Contrary to the original experiment, the BBC version saw no escalation of brutality among guards, highlighting the influence of ethical oversight and the absence of experimental pressure.

Rutger Bregman [32:31]: "The BBC prison experiment... It was the most boring thing I've ever seen."

This contrast underscores that human behavior in controlled settings can vary greatly depending on the structure and oversight of the experiment.

5. Hurricane Katrina: Challenging Disaster Myths

The episode transitions to a real-world application by examining Hurricane Katrina, one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in U.S. history. Initially, media and government narratives portrayed widespread chaos, lawlessness, and racial violence in New Orleans post-Katrina, reinforcing the Veneer Theory.

Grace Brown [36:05]: "When Katrina breached the levees... People were on their own."

However, investigative reports and firsthand accounts debunked many of these myths, revealing that the narrative of rampant anarchy was exaggerated. Instead, communities, particularly marginalized ones, demonstrated remarkable resilience and mutual aid.

6. Common Ground: A Testament to Human Solidarity

Malik Rahim, a resident of New Orleans, emerged as a key figure in fostering Common Ground, a grassroots movement that provided aid and support to those affected by Katrina. Contrary to the demonized image of chaos, Malik and his volunteers established health clinics, shelters, and organized community support systems.

Malik Rahim [43:29]: "Common Ground started by providing rescues and basic aid to anyone they could."

This initiative highlighted the innate human capacity for cooperation and altruism in the face of disaster, challenging the prevailing notion of inherent human brutality.

7. The Power of Narrative and Hope

Rebecca Solnit and Rutger Bregman emphasize the significance of the stories we tell about humanity. While pessimistic narratives like the Veneer Theory can justify authoritarianism and societal hierarchies, optimistic perspectives foster hope and collective action towards a better society.

Rebecca Solnit [48:05]: "What we get in a crisis situation is an explosion of altruism. So people start helping each other on a massive scale."

Bregman advocates for utopian thinking, believing that history is a testament to the possibility of monumental positive change driven by collective effort and hope.

8. Conclusion: Rethinking Human Nature

The episode wraps up by urging listeners to reconsider entrenched beliefs about human nature. By examining historical theories, psychological experiments, and real-world events like Hurricane Katrina, Throughline challenges the validity of the Veneer Theory and promotes a more nuanced understanding of humanity's potential for both good and evil.

Rutger Bregman [49:36]: "History shows us that things can be different. They don't have to be this way."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Veneer Theory posits that civilization masks our inherently selfish nature, but this episode challenges its validity through critical examination of psychological experiments and disaster responses.

• The Stanford Prison Experiment, long hailed as evidence of inherent brutality, is scrutinized for its methodological flaws and external influences, raising questions about its conclusions.

• Hurricane Katrina serves as a real-world example where initial narratives of chaos and lawlessness were debunked, revealing instead a strong sense of community and mutual aid.

• Common Ground exemplifies how communities can self-organize and support each other in crisis, countering the bleak predictions of human nature theories.

• Optimistic Narratives about human nature and the power of hope can drive societal progress and collective action towards positive change.

For those intrigued by the complexities of human nature and the stories that shape our understanding of society, "When Things Fall Apart" offers a compelling and thought-provoking exploration that encourages a reevaluation of long-held beliefs.

Transcript

[Narrator]

This message comes from Progressive Insurance and the name your price tool. It helps you find car insurance options in your budget. Try it [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[Rutger Bregman]

An old man says to his grandson, there's a fight going on inside me. It's a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil, angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant and cowardly. The other is good, peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you and inside every other person too. After a moment, the boy asks, which wolf will win. The old man smiles. The one you feed. What we assume in other people is what we get out of them. Our view of human nature tends to be a self fulfilling prophecy. If we assume that people are fundamentally selfish, then that's how they will behave. If we assume that people are fundamentally decent, then maybe we can create a very different kind of society.

[Rebecca Solnit]

This is Rutger Bregman.

[Rutger Bregman]

I'm a Dutch historian and I'm the author of the book A Hopeful History.

[Rebecca Solnit]

But this story doesn't start off hopeful.

[Philip Zimbardo]

There's a very widespread assumption that human beings are basically selfish, brutal, barbarian.

[Rebecca Solnit]

And this is author Rebecca Solnit.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Cowardly, just sort of despicable. And that civilization is some sort of structural overlay that keeps us from realizing our true brutal natures, preventing us from doing what we would, would really do if we could do anything we wanted, which would be rape, loot, pillage, maraud, steal.

[Rebecca Solnit]

And that idea that if you take away civilization, that people are essentially evil has been an easy sell.

[Grace Brown]

Introduce a little anarchy.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Upset the established.

[Grace Brown]

Order, and everything becomes chaos.

[Rutger Bregman]

So many of these Hollywood movies, like Batman gives us a very simplistic view of how evil really works.

[Rebecca Solnit]

The story of Batman has always been about the battle of good versus evil. The two wolves, Batman and the Joker.

[Grace Brown]

This city just showed you that it's.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Full of people ready to believe in.

[Grace Brown]

Good until their spirit breaks completely.

[Rebecca Solnit]

In the film the Dark Knight, the Joker tries to convince Batman that everyone, from the mayor to the people of Gotham are all just out for themselves.

[Grace Brown]

I'll show you. When the chips are down, these, these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.

[Rutger Bregman]

Yeah, the Joker is really interesting. He's the quintessential stereotypical depiction of evil in our culture. I would say.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

So the Joker believes that everybody is dark, selfish, maybe even a little evil, like how we really are. And Batman is good. These Two sides are a trope as old as storytelling, an idea that plays into something called the Thin Veneer Theory.

[Rutger Bregman]

Veneer Theory is a very old idea that's deeply entrenched in Western culture. It goes like supposedly our civilization is just a thin layer, just a thin veneer. And below that lies raw human nature. The theory basically, that humans deep down are fundamentally selfish, or maybe even worse than that. Maybe we're even beasts or monsters.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

And the only thing keeping us from eating each other is civilization. Basically hierarchy, governments, law and order. And when that's taken away, then when.

[Rutger Bregman]

Something happens, just a crisis, a natural disaster, maybe a war breaks out, then people share who they really are, then that veneer, it cracks.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Civilization goes away.

[Rutger Bregman]

And yes, our true human nature is revealed.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

This is an idea that many of us accept as truth. But what if veneer theory doesn't actually hold up against scrutiny? What if it's a story we tell ourselves?

[Philip Zimbardo]

What if it's just justifying shackles, authoritarianism, overlords justifying institutional violence, bosses justifying inequality, holding us all in place, justifying lack of rights and freedoms, hierarchies, social controls?

[Rebecca Solnit]

Things fall apart.

[Grace Brown]

That is why you have prisons and.

[Rebecca Solnit]

You have laws, you have borders and you have standards.

[Philip Zimbardo]

And the science, the evidence, the sociology doesn't really support that.

[Rebecca Solnit]

The world can often feel like a cold, brutal place. If you turn on the news or scroll social media, you're probably going to see dark stories about things happening in the world. It can feel isolating and scary and a lot of times hopeless. It can be easy to believe that the only thing keeping us from total chaos is that thin veneer of civilization. But what if the thin veneer is what's causing the problem? A fragile shell, a cover that's actually preventing us from having a better world.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

On this episode of Throughline from npr, how we've come to believe Veneer theory and the stories that make us fear one another and how it might be time to tell a different story. To feed the other wolf.

[Grace Brown]

Hi, my name is Grace Brown and.

[Philip Zimbardo]

I'm from Upland, Indiana, and you're listening.

[Narrator]

To Throughline from npr. Support for NPR and the following message come from Betterment, the automated investing and savings app. CEO Sarah Levy shares how Betterment utilizes tech tools powered by human advice.

[Grace Brown]

Betterment is here to help customers build wealth their way.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

And we provide powerful technology and complete.

[Grace Brown]

Human support where technology can deliver ease.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Of use and affordability. And the people behind that technology can provide advice and guidance.

[Narrator]

Learn [e-mail] Investing involves risk performance, not guaranteed.

[Grace Brown]

This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies, sending or spending money abroad. Hidden fees may be taking a cut. With Wise, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid market exchange rate. Visit wise.comtnc Supply this message comes from BetterHelp.

[Narrator]

Therapy can be expensive, but at BetterHelp they believe therapy should feel accessible, not like a luxury, which is why they offer quality care at a price that makes sense and can help you with anything from anxiety to everyday stress. Your mental health is worth it, and now it's within reach. Visit betterhelp.com NPR to get 10% off your first month, that's betterhelp.com NPR Part.

[Grace Brown]

1 the Weaker Springs of Human Nature to judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.

[Rebecca Solnit]

These are words from the Federalist Papers, a series of essays that argued in favor of the Constitution of the United.

[Grace Brown]

States of America, and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

[Rebecca Solnit]

The essays paint a bleak picture of human nature, that without government and civilization, people would hurt each other whenever the opportunity presented itself.

[Grace Brown]

A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.

[Rutger Bregman]

And this is actually something that the Founding Fathers really had in mind when they were designing the Constitution.

[Rebecca Solnit]

We, the people of the United States.

[Rutger Bregman]

In order to form a more perfect union, and that's establish justice. Why they wanted to create this elaborate balance of power because they believe that if they wouldn't have that veneer of civilization, that, you know, hell will break loose.

[Grace Brown]

One great error is that we suppose mankind is more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest. Alexander Hamilton.

[Rutger Bregman]

How does a bastard, orphan.

[Grace Brown]

Son of a whore, and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by Providence of.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Alexander Hamilton was one of the main authors of the Federalist Papers. He's been immortalized in recent years by Lin Manuel Miranda's musical and those were his words you've been hearing.

[Grace Brown]

A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.

[Rebecca Solnit]

He's seen as an immigrant, an innovator, and a patriot. And while those things may be true, what's often left out of his story is that he was very pessimistic about human nature and that Wasn't exactly original or unique.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

For his time, he was articulating a very old view of human beings as fundamentally bad and in need of civilization to behave well. This idea shows up in societies all over the world. But in the west, where we're going to focus this episode, the idea was most potently captured by one of Europe's most famous philosophers, Thomas Hobbes.

[Grace Brown]

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war, and such a war, war as is of every man against every man.

[Rutger Bregman]

And he argued that back in the state of nature, we lived lives that were, in his famous words, nasty, brutish and short.

[Grace Brown]

In such condition, there is no place for industry because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

[Rutger Bregman]

It was only when we gave up our liberty and we appointed powerful ruler that he called a Leviathan. It was only then that we established peace. So, yes, we lost our liberty. We gained security in return. That's the grand bargain that we made. With the rise of civilization.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Thomas Hobbes thought a strong government was necessary to keep us from killing each other, from devolving into a state of mutual destruction. And if you look at the time and place he was born, it's easy to understand why he might have seen the world this way.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Thomas Hobbes was an Englishman who lived during the civil wars, which were bloody and nasty in that country. And they're often blamed for shaping his political philosophy.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

From 1642 to 1651, English elites fought each other in a series of wars over governance and religious freedom. Thomas Hobbes lived during these brutal, bloody wars. But author Rebecca Solnit argues that a deeper backdrop was that Thomas Hobbes lived in a very Christian society in which.

[Philip Zimbardo]

One of the fundamental beliefs was that somehow we fell from grace, were kicked out of paradise and were fallen, and somehow had to be redeemed through Jesus and the church. So Christianity itself has, if not a thin veneer theory, at least a theory that human beings are kind of a mess that needs some cleanup work.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Hobbes idea caught on quickly and influenced politicians and philosophers for generations, all the way up to Alexander Hamilton. He'd put into words long held beliefs about human nature. And he did this at a time when Europeans were colonizing much of the earth and looking for justifications.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Hobbes idea that somehow you need authoritarian structures to control people corresponds really well to imperialism and colonialism. People who saw themselves as civilization, imposing order on chaos.

[Rutger Bregman]

It's been strongly developed in Western culture since the dawn of civilization. Obviously, rulers have always looked for justifications of their power. And this has always been one of the most logical and straightforward explanations, like, we need to be in power to protect you from yourself. A hundred years after Thomas Hobbes published his famous book Leviathan, another philosopher came along and his name was Jean Jacques Rousseau.

[Grace Brown]

Civilization is an hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.

[Rutger Bregman]

And in almost every single way, he believed the opposite of what Hobbes had argued.

[Grace Brown]

Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may, under any pretext whatever, subject him without his consent.

[Rutger Bregman]

According to Jean Jacques Rousseau, our life in the state of nature was actually pretty good. We were quite healthy, we had lots of exercise, we had a varied diet, and it was pretty peaceful as well. But then everything went wrong when we gave up our liberty and we invented private property and we settled down in villages and cities and we created this thing called civilization.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Human beings in a state of nature are pure and innocent and good, and society is what corrupts them.

[Rutger Bregman]

So according to Rousseau, civilization was not what has saved us, but it was our downfall. This big debate between Hobbes and Rousseau, it really lies at the heart of our biggest political discussions. Between the realists and the idealists, between conservatives and progressives. You know, very often when we're debating each other on Twitter, it's basically Hobbs and Rousseau all over again.

[Rebecca Solnit]

What is the essential nature of humanity? Are we inherently good or inherently bad? Are we more prone to being selfish individuals or helpful members of communities? Maybe the way we collectively answer these questions dictates how we structure our society.

[Rutger Bregman]

Our theory of human nature has absolutely massive implications for pretty much everything. So just to give a couple of education, if you believe that kids are fundamentally lazy and selfish, then you need a quite hierarchical schooling system. But if you think that kids are naturally curious and creative, then maybe you don't need, you know, all that homework. Maybe you can just give kids the freedom to decide for themselves what they find interesting. If you are the CEO of a company, if you believe that your employees are fundamentally selfish, well, what are you going to do? You need a lot of bureaucracy, probably. Maybe you're going to place cameras to make sure that your employees don't steal equipment. If you believe that your employees are fundamentally cooperative and actually want to do what's best for the company, then maybe you can work in self directed teams and you don't need all those managers and you can actually rely on people's intrinsic motivation. So again and again and again, our view of human nature has pretty practical implications for how we live our lives.

[Philip Zimbardo]

It's very useful to the authorities and people invested in those structures to believe in their own value and necessity. And essentially it's a justification for hierarchy, for authority, for the violence that authorities impose, which is always justified as like, oh, we're bombing these people to prevent violence. The police are shooting these people to prevent violence. We're beating these people up to prevent disorder.

[Rebecca Solnit]

And all of this brings us back to the essential debate.

[Rutger Bregman]

Who was right? Was Thomas Hobbes right, or was Jean Jacques Rousseau right? Was civilization our salvation, or has it been our doom?

[Rebecca Solnit]

The truth is, Hobbes and Rousseau were both kind of just making stuff up. They had very little evidence for their viewpoints. Modern science was in its infancy. When they were alive. These were just ideas that popped into their heads.

[Rutger Bregman]

So for a long time this was just a philosophical question and there was not really a way to resolve the debate. But now that's different. Now we've got the evidence from modern anthropology, archaeology, and I think we can actually say who was more or less right.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Coming up, we revisit one of the most famous psychological experiments ever conducted and find out why we feed the wolf we feed.

[Grace Brown]

Hey, this is the Wild Dougherty from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and you're listening to through live on npr.

[Narrator]

This message comes from Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. This message comes from Thuma. Create your oasis with Thuma, a modern design company that specializes in furniture and home goods by stripping away everything but the essential. Thuma makes elevated beds with premium materials and intentional details with clean lines, subtle curves and minimalist style. The Thuma bed collection is available in four signature finishes to match any design aesthetic. To get $100 towards your first bed purchase, go to Thuma Co. This message comes from Progressive Insurance and the name your price tool. It helps you find car insurance options in your budget. Try it [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[Grace Brown]

Part 2 Feeding the Wolf As a psychologist, I have focused my career about understanding how ordinary people are good people. Get seduced to doing bad things, evil things, if you will.

[Rebecca Solnit]

The voice you just heard is American psychologist Philip Zimbardo speaking to a Dutch public broadcaster, VPRO, back in 2011.

[Grace Brown]

And I have focused on trying to understand the power of situations and systems to dominate individuals.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Maybe you've never heard of him, but the study he conducted back in 1971 at Stanford University might ring a bell.

[Grace Brown]

These are not prisoners, and this is not a prison. They are college students, and they were part of an astonishing experiment.

[Rutger Bregman]

The Stanford Prison Experiment is the most famous experiment in the history of psychology. And it was done by a young psychologist named Philip Zimbardo. And he had a pretty simple idea. He recruited 24 students, and he said to 12 of them, you're going to be the guards, and to the other 12, you're going to be the prisoners. And so he put these prisoners in a fake prison in the basement of Stanford University.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Zimbardo and his team wanted to see what happened when people either became guards or or prisoners. The prisoners rights movement had started the decade before, and Zimbardo wanted to show how the US Prison system was failing.

[Grace Brown]

There they were led to a simulated prison block consisting of three small cells, a narrow hallway, and a closet designed for solitary confinement. This would be their entire world.

[Rebecca Solnit]

For two weeks, the experiment was filmed by Zimbardo and his research team. And on the first day, it was mostly uneventful. The students playing prisoners were taken and put into their cells. But then on the second day of.

[Rutger Bregman]

The experiment, things began to unravel.

[Grace Brown]

It was a very sharp change in the whole nature of what was happening in that prison.

[Rutger Bregman]

There was a rebellion among the inmates.

[Grace Brown]

They refused to eat. They barricaded themselves in their cells. They started ripping off their numbers, started screaming out obscenities at the guards, and.

[Rutger Bregman]

That was countered by the guards with fire extinguishers. And after that, the guards, you know, basically did all kinds of terrible things. They tried to break their subordinates.

[Grace Brown]

The guards then began to escalate their use of power. Some of them had prisoners clean out toilet bowls with their bare hands to do things which were really degrading and humiliating. And the prisoners did it without complaining, just did it, because this is what they had to do.

[Rutger Bregman]

And was actually one inmate who really, you know, went ballistic. He started screaming, and I'm quoting here, I mean, Jesus Christ, I'm burning up inside. Don't you know, I want to get out. This is all fucked up inside. I can't stand another night. I just can't take it anymore. So that's one of the reasons that the Stanford Prison Experiment became so famous, because if you Just look at the video of it. It's very, very powerful. And you think what happened to these guys and the story as it's been told for, well, half a century, was that these guards, they initially described themselves as hippies, pacifists, right, who would never hurt a fly. But then in the context of being in that prison and being handed this power over the prisoners, they turn into monsters. So it's a very powerful illustration of veneer theory, right? These boys showed who they really were once they were in that situation.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

The results of the Stanford Prison Experiment made it into almost all psychology textbooks. And its essential takeaway that given the right context, human beings will be quick to act brutally, was often accepted uncritically.

[Rutger Bregman]

That's basically the story that's been told for decades and decades. It's incredibly famous in the United States, in Europe, in Asia. I recently visited Japan. Everyone knows about the Stanford Prison Experiment there as well.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

But why was the conclusion of this study so easy to believe and accept? Well, according to Rucker, it's because it provides, quote, scientific evidence for what Thomas Hobbes was arguing centuries before.

[Rutger Bregman]

The way I see it is that they were just telling a very old story with basically the same message. People deep down are just rotten. We are rotten to the core.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

But when Rutger was writing his book A Hopeful History, he wanted to find out whether anyone had actually really looked into the Stanford Prison Experiment.

[Rutger Bregman]

And that's when he stumbled upon this study published in French. It's a study by a sociologist called. The title in French is the History of a Lie.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

It was first published in 2018.

[Rutger Bregman]

This is astounding. He was the first one to go into the archives of the Stanford Prison Experiment to study what really happened.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

For the most part, Zimbardo's results were accepted. No one had gone into the source materials to investigate it further.

[Rutger Bregman]

There was the archival material that could be looked at.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Letexie got on a plane and flew to California, went to Stanford, and did just that.

[Rutger Bregman]

And what he found was really, really shocking.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Letixier spent hours and hours looking through videos and documents that showed these students.

[Rutger Bregman]

Were being pressured all the time to behave as nasty and sadistic as possible.

[Rebecca Solnit]

And they weren't all up for it. Some student guards said things like, if.

[Rutger Bregman]

It were up to me, I would just, you know, sit here and play cards and make music together with the inmates.

[Grace Brown]

The gods then began to escalate their use of power.

[Rutger Bregman]

But that's obviously not the result that Philip Zimbardo wanted. So he, together with one of his co researcher, a man named David Jeffe. They basically pulled a huge amount of tricks to convince these students to start behaving in a really terrible way.

[Rebecca Solnit]

David Jaffe, Zimbardo's co researcher, also played the role of prison warden. In one of the recordings from the Stanford archives. You can hear him pushing one of the guards in experiment to be tough on the inmates.

[Grace Brown]

But we really want to get you active and involved because the guards have to know that every guard is going to be what we call a tough.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Jaffe tells the participant he has to be a tough guard. To which the participant responds, I'm not too tough.

[Grace Brown]

You have to kind of try and get it in you. Well, I don't. I don't know about that.

[Rebecca Solnit]

This experiment was supposed to show that in a prison, guards would naturally begin to act sadistically towards prisoners. But when some of the students playing guards refused to treat prisoners badly, the experimenters appealed to their values.

[Rutger Bregman]

And so they said to the students, like, you're progressive, right? You want this. You also, you know, want the criminal justice system in the US to be reformed quite radically. So come on, play along with this. We need these results.

[Grace Brown]

It's really important for the workings of the experiment because. Because the, you know, whether or not we can make this thing seem like a prison, which is the aim of the thing, depends largely on the guard's behavior.

[Rutger Bregman]

If the subjects already sort of know, if they can guess what the point of the experiment is, then obviously the experiment is not very scientific. Then it's just a play that people are participating in. This is like the opposite of science. I asked Le Texier for my book if there's still something we can learn from the Stanford Prison Experiment. And he said, well, basically, everything that can go wrong in science, that's what we learn about it.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Philip Zimbardo passed away in October 2024. Before his death, he acknowledged that there were problems with the methodology of his study. But he defended the study's conclusions and said the experiment was a cautionary tale of what would happen to anyone if we underestimate the power of social roles and systemic structures.

[Rebecca Solnit]

And how did this end up affecting Zimbardo's career?

[Rutger Bregman]

Oh, actually, he had a fantastic career. He became the head of the American Psychological Association.

[Grace Brown]

What makes people go wrong? Interestingly, I asked this question when I was a little kid. I want to share with you some ideas about the secret power of time in a very short.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

These are some clips of Zimbardo giving talks on a range of topics. He's also played by Billy Crudup in the 2015 feature film about the Stanford Prison Experiment, which currently has an 84% rating on rotten Tomatoes. The experiment clearly has entertainment value. So 30 years after Zimbardo, another group of psychologists adapted the idea to television. In 2001, Professors Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher set up another experimental situation involving.

[Narrator]

Men assigned to the roles of guards and prisoners. This experiment was filmed by the BBC.

[Rutger Bregman]

The BBC had an idea of creating a new reality television show, and they had heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment, they had seen the footage and they were like, this is great television, right? This should be great for ratings.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

So they asked two psychology professors to replicate the Stanford Prison Experiment, which they would then turn into a reality TV show. This is Alex Haslam, one of those psychologists, speaking about the experiment.

[Rutger Bregman]

Whereas in Zimbardo's study, he didn't have much ethical much or any kind of ethical oversight of the project as a whole, in our study, we had an ethical committee on site that was monitoring all aspects of the study and were explaining explicitly there to ensure that we didn't have any of the kind of abuses of the form that were manifest in Zimbardo's study. So there would be no interference in the experiment. They would just leave the prisoners alone and watch what would happen.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

The experiment took place over the course of nine days. Cameras were rolling the entire time, and they turned all that tape into four episodes of reality tv.

[Rutger Bregman]

I have watch the whole BBC prison experiment. I'll never get those hours back. It was the most boring thing I've ever seen. Nothing happens. It just goes on and on and on for hours. It's so incredibly boring.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Some prisoners escaped from their cells, but there was no abuse from the guards, no uprising.

[Rebecca Solnit]

The fact is, the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment were not replicated without coaching from the people, people running the experiment, the guards didn't become abusive bullies. Still, despite the BBC show and lettaxier's review, the Stanford Prison Experiment still persists as an example of Thin Veneer theory, the idea that without the constraints of civilization, humans would basically eat each other. Why do you think this study has been so persistent? Like, even though people have clearly debunked it, why do people still believe in it?

[Rutger Bregman]

It's just exciting. It's a fantastic, compelling story. Why do people binge watch Game of Thrones? Why do we all love succession? It's just. It's a fantastic story. It resonates with us on a very deep level. There's this concept in medicine, you know, the notion of a placebo, you know, you give someone a pill and if only the person believes that that pill will cure him, then, you know, it may actually do.

[Rebecca Solnit]

We become the wolf we feed.

[Rutger Bregman]

We humans. We become the stories that we tell ourselves. Our stories are never just stories. They are self fulfilling prophecies.

[Rebecca Solnit]

What happens when the stories we tell ourselves actually impact real life situations? What can we learn when we look at events where the thin veneer of civilization is removed during war or natural disasters? How do human beings actually respond to each other when things fall apart? Coming up, we revisit one of the greatest natural disasters in U.S. history and look behind its headlines.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

I'm Yvette Allison Herman. I'm in Long Beach, California, and you're listening to Throughline from npr.

[Narrator]

This message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker? It's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your [e-mail] or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country. This message comes from Bombas. Nearly 30% of marathoners end their race blistered. Bombus running socks are strategically cushioned to help. Say bye to blisters. Run to bombas.com NPR and use code NPR for 20% off your first purchase.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Part 3 When the elites panic.

[Grace Brown]

Every person is hereby ordered to immediately evacuate the city of New Orleans or there's no other alternative. This is not the strongest part of.

[Rebecca Solnit]

The hurricane yet, and you can see completely horizontally.

[Rutger Bregman]

You cannot even look in a northward direction. Waters from Lake Pontchartrain broke through a levee.

[Grace Brown]

I need someone out here, man. I'm gonna die in this paddock. New Orleans is called the Big Bowl. We're gonna die in here. Pray for me, for everybody, even myself.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Poor people were left to their own devices in a city that everyone knew was gonna flood.

[Grace Brown]

Much of New Orleans is below sea level.

[Philip Zimbardo]

The levees were going to break.

[Grace Brown]

When Katrina breached the levees that held the water back, the bowl was swamped.

[Philip Zimbardo]

It was going to be a disaster.

[Grace Brown]

People were on their own. The water started rising in the attic. Ma'am, sunrise cannot come soon enough. Phone lines are down. Water stopped running. Apocalyptic.

[Rebecca Solnit]

The sewer system is backed up. Here's everything we feared.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Immediately after that happened, the US Media and a lot of government officials, including the then mayor, the governor of Louisiana, began repeating these disaster myths.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Disaster myths. This is something author Rebecca Solnit talks about in her book A Paradise Built in Hell, which focuses on how people Respond during disasters. She started writing this book shortly after Hurricane Katrina. She wanted to know what really happens when the thin veneer of civilization is gone. Are we really helpless? Are we lawless? Do we need authority to survive? Who are we?

[Grace Brown]

Police tried to keep the city from descending into complete chaos. A city that is in a virtual state of anarchy.

[Rutger Bregman]

Tonight, shots have been found.

[Grace Brown]

There were reportedly rapes, small children being.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Raped and killed, and sheer anarchy.

[Grace Brown]

People running around with guns.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Some considerable violence, we are told there.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

The news coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was dark. It gave the impression of a total apocalypse.

[Philip Zimbardo]

They sent refrigerator trucks to the Superdome, the sports arena in which a lot of people took shelter because they decided there were 200 corpses in there because they decided there'd been some kind of mass murder rampage. Thousands of evacuees sought refuge in that shelter of last resort only to be subjected to an unspeakable breakdown of law and order. Money no longer existed. Banks were not open. Credit cards didn't work. KTM machines didn't work. There were no storekeepers, with a few exceptions. And so people were. People were going, like, into pharmacies to get diapers and medicine. People were going into stores to get food and water. People who'd swum through toxic things and became part of portraying the stranded victims as monsters who needed to be controlled. Except they had an extra layer of racial bias.

[Grace Brown]

Quickly, news reports were saturated with a lasting image of Katrina. The looter.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Looters are running free.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Mass looting.

[Grace Brown]

Looting has launched looting in New Orleans. Three gentlemen just climbed into the broken.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Window of this mini mart.

[Grace Brown]

Here we see a black family. It says they're looting. See a white family. It says they're looking for food. They represent a frightening breakdown of law and order.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

The news about the violence and the looting was greatly exaggerated at the highest level, including by the city's mayor and police chief.

[Rutger Bregman]

Most of the horrific violence at the.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Superdome, the reports of dozens of murders and rapes, was actually a myth.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Many of the stories of brutality at the Superdome were debunked. Instead, what was happening was thousands of people waiting days to be evacuated with limited food, water, and medical supplies.

[Rebecca Solnit]

The truth is there was violence that was happening during Katrina's aftermath, but it wasn't being committed by the people being blamed by the elites.

[Grace Brown]

In New Orleans today, a federal jury.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Convicted five current and former police officers.

[Grace Brown]

In the shooting deaths of unarmed civilians. Six days after Hurricane Katrina, there had.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Been a lot of violence by the police, by white supremacists.

[Grace Brown]

You had to shoot somebody you had to shoot somebody.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Who were the monsters? It was people who thought they were somehow divinely ordained, ala Hobbes to govern over the rest of us.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher, the Leviathan. Remember him?

[Philip Zimbardo]

I have one message for these, for these hoodlums. They were the governor who said that she had troops and they were locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will. The mayor who fell apart Nagan had.

[Grace Brown]

Taken bribes worth half a million dollars both before Katrina and after Katrina.

[Philip Zimbardo]

The Bush era FEMA also failed profoundly.

[Rutger Bregman]

Five days after Katrina hit, much needed.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Federal assistance had yet to reach New Orleans. Bad collaboration between the federal and local governments meant that rescues were delayed. And even the basics like food and water or medical supplies were running short.

[Philip Zimbardo]

So many people who were exactly those people were supposed to be the damn thin veneer turned out to be the wild dogs, the callous people.

[Rutger Bregman]

It's the elites who are supposed to help. They're the ones who panic. It's the elites who are watching the situation unfold from a distance, you know, from behind their screens. They've got their theory of human nature. They're big believers often in veneer theory, so they get very worried.

[Philip Zimbardo]

The Leeds decide the rest of us are going to behave badly, which justifies their own violence, their own power grabs, their own selfishness.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Rebecca Solnit says while the elites panicked, the people on the ground in New Orleans, most of whom were black, actually did the opposite.

[Philip Zimbardo]

What I focused on was the pro social stuff, the incredible things people did to rescue and take care of each other. The incredible way people within hours didn't become marauding hordes, but became spontaneous communities of mutual aid and care.

[Grace Brown]

Every at first it was, I'm just helping me and mines, you dig.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

This is Malik Rahim. Rebecca interviewed him for her book. And so we reached out too.

[Grace Brown]

And I'm from New Orleans community Algiers, Louisiana.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Algiers Point, where Malik lives, is a neighborhood in New Orleans that became infamous for white vigilantes that would patrol the streets during Katrina claiming to shoot looters.

[Grace Brown]

One of my neighbors came by my house crying, and I said, man, what's wrong with you? He told me, he said, man, listen, they was about to kill me around the corner. I said what he was telling me to run.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

An investigation by reporters found that at least 11 black men were shot in the days following the hurricane. A ProPublica report says, quote, the shooters, it appears, were all white.

[Grace Brown]

New Orleans was on the verge of A racial war. And a racial war that as a black I knew we couldn't win.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Malik remained in his house after the storm, and he had help from a friend to stay safe. They'd stand guard on Malik's front porch, watching all this desperation, this violence from white supremacists, this lack of action from the government unfold. And they got to talking about social movements.

[Grace Brown]

We discussed why so many social movements start off with such vigor and end in such despair. You know, reason is because then I lost what they had in common, that common ground that brought them together.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Common Ground, that's the collective Malik and his friends started. After those conversations at his house, they stepped in to fill the needs of the community, needs that were not met by the government. They worked in a city where tens of thousands were stranded without an evacuation plan, with no running water or electricity. In the face of immense difficulty, they banded together and built people at lossholds.

[Grace Brown]

And that's what Common Ground came down into. We restored hope by teaching civic responsibility.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Common Ground started by providing rescues and basic aid to anyone they could. They created health clinics, shelters, mobile street medics, a whole network of mutual aid made up of all kinds of volunteers. The kind of mutual aid that Malik helped make popular as a Black Panther. The kind of mutual aid that has existed in black communities for generations. Before Katrina, Common Ground would end up helping thousands of people. Malik says this includes some of those white vigilantes.

[Grace Brown]

I seen one of those vigilantes had to bring his mother to our health clinic. And our health clinic went from being the Panther clinic to a hippie clinic to just a clinic.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Malik and his colleagues in Common Ground didn't turn anyone away. It wasn't us against them, and chaos didn't have to reign.

[Grace Brown]

When you start exposing those myths, then people start coming together. And when they start coming together, then they start sharing and understand that the only way we gonna survive, survive this is as if we do it together.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Malik says Common Ground started with just a few people, then grew to dozens within a week, then to thousands.

[Grace Brown]

There's nothing more noble than saving life as we know it.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Malik and Rebecca both talk about how disasters like Hurricane Katrina are a window into what really happens when the thin veneer goes away. It's a window into what is possible. When humanity is put to the test.

[Grace Brown]

We gonna always be hit with disasters. But a disaster don't mean that it has to destroy hope. Without hope, this world will never be a better place.

[Philip Zimbardo]

What was amazing for me is open over and over and over again this extraordinary joy Shown out of people's faces, came out of their accounts because they'd found something that's missing in the disaster of everyday life, when everyday life is alienating, is meaningless, is commodified, is fragmented. They'd found a deep sense of immediacy, of social connection, of purposefulness. That's something I think we. We crave all the time.

[Rutger Bregman]

We've got hundreds and hundreds of studies done by sociologists and anthropologists since the 1960s, and time and time again, they've shown that actually what you get in a crisis situation is an explosion of altruism. So people start helping each other on a massive scale.

[Philip Zimbardo]

It's not all about the war of each against to each, about the selfish gene and the struggle for survival in so many ways at so many levels. Throughout evolution, throughout life on Earth, you see collaboration, cooperation, often even between species as well as within species. And we know that's what it takes to survive.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Today, it's really easy to believe that we live on a thin veneer of society. We're constantly being bombarded by bad news, by an onslaught of apocalyptic foreshadowing. It's become trendy to joke about the coming end of the world. And of course, this isn't completely unfounded. Climate change is an existential threat. There's misinformation, runaway capitalism. But really, who does it serve when we're all swimming in this toxic soup of pessimism, hopelessness, and despair? Which wolf in us does it feed? Is this way of thinking gonna make things better or paralyze us and keep things just the way they are?

[Rutger Bregman]

I've always believed in the power of utopian thinking. Every milestone of civilization, the end of slavery, democracy, equal rights for men and women. These were all utopian fantasies once, until they happened. That's why I think that history is actually the most subversive discipline of all the social sciences. Because history shows us that things can be different. They don't have to be this way. We can change them. We have to believe in the power of hope. If you believe in hope, if you're actually hopeful for the future, then you know you gotta do something.

[Rebecca Solnit]

I grew up in the 1990s, an era where popular culture promoted indifference. It was hip to not care. It was a way of showing everyone that you see people clearly for what they are. Bad. But what if that was wrong? What if seeing the world for what it is means being optimistic about humanity? What if optimism is actually what's punk rock?

[Yvette Allison Herman]

That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

[Rebecca Solnit]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

This episode was produced by me and.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Me and Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya.

[Narrator]

Steinberg, Yolanda Sanguine, Casey Minor, Christina Kim.

[Philip Zimbardo]

Devin Kadayama, Olivia Chilcote, Yordanos Tisfazion.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

Thank you to Neil Strickland, J.C. howard and Laurent Lasablier for their voiceover work.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Thanks also to Micah Ratner, Rachel Seller, Taylor Ash, Tamar Charney and Anya Grundmann.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

This episode was mixed by Josh Newell and Robert Rodriguez. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which.

[Rebecca Solnit]

Includes Anya Mizani, Navid, Marvi, Sho Fujiwara A quick note for this episode when we originally reported this story a few years ago, we reached out to Professor Philip Zimbardo to talk about the Stanford Prison Experiment, but he said he was unable to do the experiment interview.

[Yvette Allison Herman]

And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write [e-mail] thanks for listening.

[Narrator]

This message is from Synchrony bank who wants to remind you to stay flexible. Not the yoga bending circus performing kind of flexible, financially flexible like with their High Yield Savings account. Stay [e-mail] NPR Member FDIC this message.

[Grace Brown]

Comes from NPR Sponsor 1Password Protect your digital life with 1Password if you're tired of family members constantly texting you for the passwords to streaming services, 1Password lets you securely share or remove access to logins access from any device anytime. 1Password lets you securely switch between iPhone, Android, Mac and PC with convenient features like autofill. For quick sign insert right now. Get a free 2 week trial for you and your family at 1Password.com NPR.

[Narrator]

This message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker? It's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your [e-mail] or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country.