One of my favorite podcasts in the entire universe is Radiolab, a show based out of WNYC that features all sorts of stories about science, not to mention some of the snazziest editing and production I’ve heard anywhere, ever, in anything. They can turn the painfully boring stuff that used to make your mind wander in the direction of bludgeoning your high school chemistry teacher into riveting radio gold.

In January, they did a show about the bad side of human nature, and spent some time talking about an experiment that was done at Yale in which (long story short) a psychologist named Stanley Milgram tested how much pain people were willing to inflict on other people in the name of science. While, on the surface, the experiment showed how obedient people can be, one of the most interesting findings was that when a white-coat-wearing authority figure told reticent subjects that they had “no other choice” but to continue administering painful electroshocks, 100% of the people told them to stick the experiment where the sun don’t shine. People really, really don’t like being bossed around. I didn’t realize it until hearing about Milgram’s experiment, but I feel similarly about negative record reviews.

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