Episode 66 - Spooktober: The Nature of Evil
Come along for a look at the anthropology of “evil,” some of the psychological designations that true crime podcasts might neglect, some wildly speculative thoughts about the roots of human evil, and how scores on “psychopath tests” vary across societies. Plus, the earliest cold case murder, Machiavelli on Machiavellianism, and unfortunately, the entirely unwelcome reappearance of the Evil Neanderthal theory.
Read more:
Cultural Relativism (WIkibooks)
How evil is a socially constructed concept: Evil across societies (The Manitoban)
Demons, Dybbuks, Ghosts, & Golems (My Jewish Learning)
Psychiatric labeling in cross-cultural perspective (Science)
The Nature of Evil (Huffington Post)
The Stigma of Personality Disorders (Current Psychiatry Reports)
Personality Disorders (The Mayo Clinic)
Why It Pays to Be a Bit of a Psychopath (LiveScience)
Successful cavemen were serial killers (New York Post)
The Criminal Psychopath: History, Neuroscience, Treatment, and Economics (Jurimetrics)
This Author Thinks We Might Be on the Verge of a New Generation of Serial Killers (Vice)
World's Oldest Cold Case: A 430,000-Year-Old Murder Victim Found In Pit Of Bones (Forbes)
Unraveling the True Machiavelli (JHU Arts & Sciences Magazine)
500-year-old arrest warrant for Machiavelli discovered (Archaeology.wiki)
Monster Talk episode with Jon Ronson discussing the Psychopath Test
Photo credit: CT Analysis of Cranium 17 traumas, from Sala N, Arsuaga JL, Pantoja-Pérez A, Pablos A, Martínez I, Quam RM, et al. (2015) Lethal Interpersonal Violence in the Middle Pleistocene. PLoS ONE 10(5): e0126589. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126589.