The Science of Revenge: Why Getting Even Feels So Good
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2025
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why do we crave revenge? And why can't we stop? In this episode, James Kimmel explains the neuroscience behind one of our most destructive urges. Drawing from his new book, The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction, Kimmel reveals how revenge activates the same brain circuits as drugs like cocaine—and why even imagining payback can feel euphoric.
If you've ever fantasized about revenge (and who hasn't?), whether in politics or personal relationships, this episode offers a chilling yet hopeful look at the science of moral outrage and redemption.
James Kimmel, Jr., JD, is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, a lawyer, and the founder and co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies. A breakthrough scholar and expert on revenge, he first identified compulsive revenge seeking as an addiction and developed the behavioral addiction model of revenge as a public health approach for preventing and treating violence. His new book is The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction—and How to Overcome It.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Michael Shermer Show. |
| 0:15.4 | Hey, everybody, it's Michael Shermer, and it's time for another episode of the Michael |
| 0:18.8 | Shermer show. |
| 0:20.2 | I got a really special |
| 0:21.4 | guest for you today, a really hot topic. You might say the topic is revenge and violence more |
| 0:27.2 | generally. In fact, it turns out there's a science of the study of revenge. But before I |
| 0:32.1 | introduce my guest in his book of that title, The Science of Revenge, let me just read something |
| 0:36.6 | I wrote. This is in the moral arc from 2015, in which I'm quoting, or actually citing David Bus's |
| 0:43.5 | 2005 book, The Murderer Next Door, Why the Mind is Designed to Kill, in which |
| 0:49.7 | Buss reports that most people have harbored homicidal fantasies at some point in their lives. Who are these |
| 0:55.4 | homicidal fantasists? Quote, not the gang members or troubled runaways one might expect to express |
| 1:01.7 | violent rage. Buss explained, but intelligent, well scrubbed, mostly middle class kids. In other words, |
| 1:06.9 | his students, which is how a lot of psych research is done. But, but Bus not only conducted |
| 1:11.5 | his own studies, he gathered the results of other related studies that together comprised |
| 1:15.7 | a database of over 5,000 people worldwide. Basically, they asked, have you ever thought about |
| 1:21.8 | killing somebody? And Bus says he was just shocked, like, oh my God, like almost everybody. |
| 1:28.2 | What he found was, let's see, it was 91% of men and 84% of women reported having had at least one vivid homicidal fantasy in their life. |
| 1:38.3 | One man who acted on these fantasies from a group of Michigan murderers whom Bus studied said he killed his girlfriend because I was deeply in love with her, |
| 1:47.1 | and she knew that. |
| 1:48.1 | It infuriated me for her to be with another guy. |
| 1:51.8 | Jealousy is a common motive, as evidenced in another case in which a man flew into a jealous rage |
| 1:56.2 | during sex with his wife. |
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