How we think about evil

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including Dr Jack Symes, philosopher at Durham University; Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge, Interdisciplinary Chair of Humanities & Human Rights at the University of Birmingham; novelist Ruth Ware; Dr Oliver Scott Curry, Chief Science Officer at Kindness.org and Research Affiliate in the Anthropology Department at the University of Oxford; and campaigner Zrinka Bralo, Director of Migrants Organize.

Topics include the classical philosophical problem of evil, the psychology of evil, Hannah Arendt's concept of the banality of evil, and the question of why the Devil gets the best lines in literature. Plus, we look at t6he work and legacy of social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who devised the controversial Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, and who died in October 2024.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can I just say?
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0:14.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
0:16.7	And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.
0:21.7	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:25.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:26.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
0:29.7	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.7	Sort of expecting that every week now.
0:35.8	BBC Sounds, music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:40.0	Hello, this is the Arts and Ideas podcast with me, Matthew Sweet.
0:44.7	We'll let evil into this edition of free thinking if it's not in the room already.
0:50.7	Saying where evil resides seems as difficult as deciding what it is, and perhaps that's the same question.
0:58.2	If you've been listening to this year's BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures by the forensic psychiatrist Gwen Ad's head,
1:04.6	you'll have heard her describe evil as an event in the mind.
1:08.7	Other descriptions are available the last two and a half thousand years
	...

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