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The Good Fight

Abigail Marsh on Psychopaths

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.6907 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 74 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Abigail Marsh is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at Georgetown University. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Abigail Marsh explore what to do if a child you know might be psychopathic, whether psychopathy is linked to charisma and success, and how to protect yourself. Wondering if you or a loved one might be a psychopath? Take the quiz! If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: [email protected] Podcast production by Mickey Freeland and Leonora Barclay. Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google X: @Yascha_Mounk & @JoinPersuasion YouTube: Yascha Mounk, Persuasion LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I don't think any psychopathy researcher I've ever met says that there's any kind of tell in casual conversation that can reliably indicate that somebody is psychopathic because people are psychopathic or shape-shifters.

0:10.2

And this is not true of everybody, right?

0:11.8

But most of the psychopathic people that I've worked with and the work that I do will say that they mask in most interactions that they're in.

0:21.6

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

0:30.5

What is a psychopath?

0:33.8

Is there a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?

0:37.5

Can you recognize the lack of... Is there a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?

0:43.9

Can you recognize the lack of care for other human beings?

0:51.9

I like you heard to engage in terrible violent behaviors later in life, in children as young as two or three years old.

0:57.3

If that is the case, is it possible to intervene with the right treatments, with the right therapy? Is the cause of psychopathy genetic? Or is it that parents

1:05.4

have done something wrong in their upbringing of those children? And what are the social impacts of psychopathic traits?

1:15.2

Are psychopaths overrepresented in the ranks of successful people like CEOs?

1:19.9

And how overrepresented are they in the ranks of less successful people like those in jail.

1:31.4

Finally, how does all of this relate to very different kinds of human emotions?

1:37.9

Why is it that the existence of psychopaths may prove that most human beings are rather altruistic?

1:43.3

Well, to answer all of these questions, I invited onto the podcast Abigail Marsh.

1:47.2

Abby is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown and as you will see she has done tremendous amount of research on psychopathy,

1:54.8

including many interviews with psychopaths in which they tell her about their way of seeing the world.

2:04.4

And despite the rather dark topic, I have to say that this was not just a fascinating,

2:09.8

but also a really fun conversation.

2:12.9

In the last part of this conversation, we asked the question that I think we all want to know when considering

2:19.7

this topic, which is how do you protect yourself against psychopaths? If you think that you know

...

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