Our Better Angels

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Media

Arts, Science, Performing Arts, Social Sciences

4.6 • 40.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the months since the spread of the coronavirus, stories of selfishness and exploitation have become all too familiar: people ignoring social distancing guidelines, or even selling medical equipment at inflated prices. Most of our public and economic policies take aim at these sorts of people — the wrongdoers and the profiteers. But is there a hidden cost to the rest of us when we put bad actors at the center of our thinking? Do the measures we put in place to curtail the selfish inadvertently hurt our capacity to do right by others?

Transcript

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0:00.0	From NPR, this is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.
0:04.2	When crisis hits, people go into survival mode.
0:08.1	Some go further, putting self-interest and self-preservation
0:11.9	over the well-being of others.
0:14.1	We're seeing this with the COVID-19 pandemic.
0:16.1	I stand in the day.
0:16.9	I'm not going to stop me from partying.
0:18.6	I haven't waited.
0:19.6	We've been waiting for Miami Spring Break for a while,
0:22.2	about two years.
0:22.5	Some people have refused to wear masks in stores.
0:25.8	It's become an all-too-familiar scene
0:27.6	across the country, people getting physical over wearing masks
0:30.8	inside stores.
0:32.2	It is required.
0:33.2	But unfortunately, it's...
0:34.3	And there are even those who have bought up medical equipment
0:37.9	to sell at a profit.
0:39.5	The agents were investigating 43-year-old Baruch Feldman
0:43.3	for allegedly hoarding medical supplies,
0:45.7	including masks and gowns.
0:47.7	And selling them to doctors and nurses at the same time, though.
	...

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