Season 2 · Episode 5 — How to Make a Hero
What makes a hero? Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, now runs seminars to teach everyday people how to be heroes. But can heroism be learned? I put his unsuspecting students into a fake crisis situation to see if they would act heroically. Also, I asked employees to help me run a seemingly dangerous experiment, to see if they would blow the whistle to stop me.
Season 2 episodes
E1Would you reroute a train to run over one person to prevent it from running over five others? In the classic “Trolley Problem” survey, most…
E2Do psychedelic drugs really bring about self-healing and personal enlightenment? New research says they may. In this episode, I travel to t…
E3Psychology. Neuroscience. Drugs. All can be tools of interrogation. In this episode, an expert shows me how to coerce unsuspecting subjects…
E4Technology isn’t just changing our lives. It’s literally changing our brains -- and maybe for the better. In this episode, I’m a human lab…
E5What makes a hero? Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, now runs seminars to teach everyda…
E6Exactly how do placebos work? Researchers believe that, through the power of suggestion, placebos may unleash the power of our own subconsc…
E7Scientists can’t dissect living people’s brains to study their function. But by examining the behavior of people whose brains are atypical…
E8Our nervous system is fundamentally electric. We move our arm by sending a signal to the muscles that control it. That means we can bypass…