#984 - Coltan Scrivner - Why We’re Drawn to Death, Crime, & Danger

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Coltan Scrivner is a behavioral scientist, an expert on morbid curiosity in horror and true‑crime media, and an author. Why are humans so curious about death? From car accidents to scary stories, roller coasters, and horror movies, some people are fascinated while others are repulsed. What draws us toward the very things we should naturally want to avoid? Expect to learn why humans are drawn to dark or morbid content and the evolutionary logic behind watching something that disturbs us, why there is a gender gap of who is more interested in morbid curiosity, why some people find serial killers fascinating while others are repulsed, the biggest differences between terror and horror & the connection between disgust and fascination, what horror can teach us about emotional self-regulation, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get 60% off an annual plan of Incogni at https:/incogni.com/modernwisdom Timestamps: (0:00) Why are We Drawn to Dark Content? (7:20) The 4 Domains of Morbid Curiosity (15:25) Morbid Curiosity in Evolution (22:51) Individual Difference in Morbid Curiosity (34:05) What is So Attractive About Serial Killers? (37:46) Why are Certain Groups Attracted to Certain Types of Morbid Content? (47:17) The Perfect Ingredients for a Horror Movie (57:14) Why is There Increasing Desensitisation to Morbid Content? (01:02:59) Find Out More About Colton Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you get into studying morbid curiosity? I'm intrigued by what the character arc is that leads you to doing that.
0:09.7	You know, a lot of people ask me, did I always want to study scary movies and the psychology of them?
0:15.5	And the answer is no. I didn't always know that I wanted to study that. But I have always enjoyed them.
0:19.6	I've always kind of like scary things when I was a kid, you know, not because I wasn't scared of them, but because they, they were scared. And that made them, you know, interesting and fun to me, especially when I could kind of have them at a distance, right? You could pause the movie or pause the game, uh, kind of collect yourself. Um, but, you know, growing up, I didn't really think I was into archaeology.
0:39.3	I thought I was going to be an archaeologist.
0:42.3	And then I studied, you know, anthropology, a little bit of biology and undergrad.
0:47.4	Studied some forensic science for my master's.
0:51.0	And then I kind of made the switch into psychology during my PhD.
0:56.6	And, you know, like a lot of eager young grad students, I was interested in everything under the sun that had to do with
1:01.3	human behavior. But that doesn't work in grad school. You have to kind of pick something and
1:05.8	stick with it. And so I remember, you know, I had a couple of these sort of paradoxes in my mind that humans did.
1:13.4	And there's lots of paradoxes about humans, the strange things they do, or at least things that seem strange on the surface.
1:18.8	And one of those was that in almost every aspect of life, we think violence is bad.
1:26.8	And we try to, we shun it, we punish it. But there are certain circumstances where violence is bad and we try to we shun it we punish it but there are certain circumstances
1:30.8	where violence is okay and not only okay but maybe even revered they think you know like the
1:35.7	colosseum for the romans for example a great example of where violence was um was revered
1:43.8	in many ways
1:44.3	and enjoyed by tens of thousands of people.
1:47.8	And so I was really interested in how people made sense of this.
1:50.4	So how did people make sense of like this violence is okay and this violence is not okay?
1:54.8	And that kind of got me into the...
1:57.0	So that was for my first step into morbid curiosity.
	...

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