The History of Being Human

National Humanities Medal Award Winner, Author, Revolutionary, Historian Professor Teofilo Ruiz explains how the witch persecutions began, what they consisted of, why they stopped, and what it means for humanity. A fascinating, broad and deep discussion with a brilliant and distinguished historical researcher and multi-award-winning teacher and author. From Professor Ruiz: “I think that the role o...

IMPORTANT CORRECTION!! Near the end of the episode I commit a gaffe and state that there is no "Satan" in the Old Testament, which is obviously false. As per our interview with Dr. Price, there IS a Satan in the Old Testament, most fully developed in the book of Job.  What I meant to say is that there is no DEVIL in the Old Testament!  I conflated the two terms (as did later interpreters of the bi...

Who are you going to believe -- the group or your own eyes?  Answer (all too often): The Group. In the fascinating and wide-ranging discussion with Psychologist Steve Rathje, we take a hard look into: what reason is and why we developed it how our need for belonging drives our beliefs why we ignore inconvenient evidence whether it hurts worse to listen to the other side or get a root canal how eve...

The 1640s were a brutal time in England, with the breakdown of many state governmental functions during the English Civil War.  It was a time of chaos, and the perfect opportunity for the one-man murrain known as Matthew Hopkins to begin accusing, swimming, pricking, and torturing hapless victims as witches. In 3 short years, Hopkins sent between 200 and 300 souls to the gallows.  But Hopkin's com...

For this episode I call an audible based on information I came across researching other topics. From 1581 to 1593 the city and surrounding villages of Trier, Germany were the scene of the greatest, worst, deadliest witch trials in European history. Powerful and weak, old and young, rich and poor became fuel for the pyres of Archbishop von Schonenberg and Bishop Binsfield. So many people died that...

Beth Caruso, author of "One of Windsor: The Untold Story of America's First Witch Hanging" tells us the stories of Alse Young and Lydia Gilbert, two of the first known victims of Witch Mania in The Colonies. Alse was hung 45 years before the more famous Salem witch fiasco, an event recorded in one line in the governor's daybook with her name left out. It was only through some serious sleuthing in...

Today we stare into the hooked nose of a most troubling historical evidence of our capacity for hysteria: the witch craze. How did witches go from being village wise women and cunning folk to enemy number one, a mortal threat to God and good Christians everywhere? How did burning old men and women for fun and profit become a respectable hobby? In this episode we cover the 1324 case of Alyse Kytele...

Today we introduce our series on Mob Madness and Mass Delusions. I speak to Rob Henderson, PhD student in psychology and Gates scholar studying moral psychology (not his own) at Cambridge University. Topics include the physical pain of social ostracism, herd mentality, moral foundations theory, whether members of a screeching, seething mob are morally responsible for their activities, and the dang...

The bones of our ancient relatives and prehistoric ancestors bear the puncture wounds, scrapings, and bite marks that tell a horrifying tale of predation. Who and what we are has been shaped by what we had to duck, run, jump, and hide from.   But if you really want to know what preyed on us in the past, look no further that at what eats us now. From the Talon Holes in the Taung Child's skull to th...

In this episode we learn that we are tough to kill and hard to keep alive. Within our sphere we are durable and resilient, but that sphere is very narrow indeed. We survive catastrophes, searing heat, crippling injuries, and seemingly mortal wounds. But could we survive in any other time and place than here and now? This is an open question.   Artwork: Oz by Ian Armstrong Music: Icy Vindur by A Hi...

Our relationship with microorganisms is *ahem* complicated...mostly symbiotic, but often combative and, yes, fatal. In this episode I speak with a physician on the front lines of the battle to the death between viruses, amoebas, and bacteria and their human victims.   Dr. Mark Crisplin in an infectious disease doctor in Portland, OR, and the author of a bi-weekly blog and several books. He is also...

The Adapt or Die Series goes Viral... Egyptians, Hittites, Athenians, Romans -- outbreak after outbreak Variola major has been a pox on our house from time immemorial. No other disease has weakened and crippled empires and wiped entire peoples off the earth like smallpox. It killed 400-500 million in the 20th Century alone. And now, through a millennium-long effort of blowing scab powder, scraping...

The puking flea apocalypse! This is one of the rare events in history where the death toll is constantly being revised HIGHER as new data comes in. By recent estimates, possibly 40% of THE WORLD killed by the Great Plague. What was it like to live during the end of the world? What did the dying -- and those who remained alive -- experience?  How did people understand what was happening? Who did th...

Where did the plague that ravaged Europe in the mid-1300's come from? How did it get there? Today we begin a three episode series on the Great Black Death Plague of Europe that killed millions and rewrote history. We stare unblinking into the face of arguably the worst catastrophe in the history of humanity.  Herein you will hear of flying corpses, the dawn of germ warfare, where some of the deadl...

In which we begin our "Adapt or Die" Series. The Byzantine empire was under attack, and tens of thousands of people in Constantinople were dying every week. It wasn't the Vandals or the Ostragoths, it was a disease that brought terror and death on a massive scale. Even the Great Justinian himself is not spared from the illness. Corpse halls, ghost ships, headless sailors, plague-ridden serpents, f...

The conclusion to the worst people ever series winds up falling to Godwin's Law. This is one of those rare cases where cliche, popular opinion, and received knowledge happen to be absolutely right: Hitler was as bad as human beings get. Aggressor and instigator of world's most deadly war. Instigator of thuggery and riots. Murderer of former friends. Head of the coldest, most clinical and industria...

The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and The Holocaust  What do these events have in common? They were both seminal events that challenged two different eras relationship to, and understanding of, evil.  Today I speak with Dr. Susan Neiman, director of The Einstein Forum, devotee of the enlightenment, moral crusader (well, sort of?), and author of "Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of...

The Real Life Big Brother that brought fear, suspicion, and distrust to the lives of 200 million people.  A man who believed you should kill your enemies, but kill your friends first. He demanded suppression, repression, execution, deportation, and propaganda on an empiric scale.  A man so vain that showing a picture of him with his blemishes could put you on his list of enemies. He sent squads to...

The first English settlement in the New World was *ahem* less than successful. You've seen the Disney version. Now hear the real story, which is so much better. Greed, incompetence, flayings, drownings, salted wife, thumb screws and executions, boiled saddles, cracked skulls, gunpowder burns, shipwrecks and mutiny, rats and cats and serpents, and many other "things which seame incredible." High dr...

A man in whom there is much to admire. Except for his pioneering studies in mass genocide, I guess. And all the gratuitous violence, of course. And the fact that he killed and displaced so many humans that the earth's climate changed. How many, you ask? I'll see you Iron Man's 5% and raise you 5% more. Enough to make him the most prolific killer of humans the world has ever seen. Why not number 1...

Can science tell us right from wrong?  Can it serve as a foundation for morality? Sam Harris believes it can. David Hume said it can’t almost 300 years ago     Note!!! This is a break from "The Worst People Ever" Series. Sam Harris is not, to my knowledge, anywhere close to one of the worst people in history.   Instead, his ideas on morality, such as they are, are critiqued.   Become a supporter o...

Dissolute, drunken, perverted and depraved. A man who went on "violence binges" every time he got wasted, which was all the time; and whose actions were considered beyond the pale by almost all other Nazis. Meet the 4th Worst Homo sapiens sapiens of all time, a man you might not have ever heard of, but who you will now find hard to forget. Although I do not catalog his atrocities in explicit detai...

This festering bubo in the armpit of humanity was the "medical director" of the infamous Japanese Unit 731.  In pursuit of the deadliest possible biological warfare agent, and with a hearty dose of sheer sadistic curiosity, he performed his experiments in the spirit of true egalitarianism: on prisoners of war; on Chinese, Soviet, Indian, British and American troops; on civilians in the surrounding...

Meet the one-man plague, the skull-stacker, the maker of incendiary camels, a man whose coffin curse is worse than any mummy because it actually panned out. In the annals of history, there have been very few people who accomplished what this man did. Too bad this genius was also an all-around dismal excuse for a human being.       Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcas...

We take a well-earned break from the worst people in history to speak about the factors that influence what is best in us. Dr. Paul Zak is a renowned and prolific public intellectual, author, corporate advisor, and researcher. His groundbreaking work on the role of oxytocin in sociality has been profoundly and broadly influential.  In this interview we discuss the role of oxytocin in moral [read:p...