The Good Show

The standard view of evolution is that living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition. And there is no doubt that today's plants and animals carry the genetic legacy of ancestors who fought fiercely to survive and reproduce. But in this hour that we first broadcast back in 2010, we wonder whether there might also be a logic behind sharing, niceness, kindness ... or even, self-sacrifice. Is altruism an aberration, or just an elaborate guise for sneaky self-interest? Do we really live in a selfish, dog-eat-dog world? Or has evolution carved out a hidden code that rewards genuine cooperation? Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Wait, you're listening?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Okay. All right. Okay. All right.

• 0:08Speaker 02

  You're listening to Radiolab.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Radiolab.

• 0:11Speaker 02

  From?

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  WNYC. See? Yep.

• 0:20Speaker 03

  This is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasr. It's the holidays, and as usual, at this time of year, everyone's become so nice all of a sudden. Giving gifts, donating to charities, showing up with a plate of cookies. Everything feels so warm and gooey and selfless. But where is all of this goodness coming from? This week, we're bringing back an episode from 2010 that asks a simple question. Why do we sometimes help others even when it hurts us to do so? It feels like the right episode for right now, not because it's a holiday story, although there is a little Christmas parable in there,

• 1:03Speaker 03

  but because it asks what generosity is, where it comes from, and whether it truly exists at all. Here it is, the good show.

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  All right. Okay, so let's just do the open. All right. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krulwich. This is Radiolab. And today, we're going to be talking-- well, let's do it this way. Which way? I was at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. A big gathering spot for cool people with new books. And that particular week-- Is Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  They like him. Mm-hmm.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Don't make it so easy for him. I decided to begin-- This is a real problem for a lot of people. By quoting him to him. You write, I don't know if it's in this book or some other, "The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive. Others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear. Others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites. Thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored."

• 2:30Speaker 04

  Darwin was worried by the same thing. I mean Darwin recognized the total horror of the suffering in nature. It was one of the things that actually made him lose his faith. But he also realized that it's not just a fact that it happens. It's intrinsic to natural selection that it must happen. And when you look at a beautiful animal like a cheetah that appears to be beautifully designed for something, like a cheetah is amazingly well-designed apparently for catching gazelles. And gazelles are amazingly well-designed for escaping from cheetahs. But they are the end products of a sort of evolutionary arms race in which thousands, millions of animals have died.

• 3:15Speaker 04

  The shaping, the carving of the shape of a cheetah or a gazelle has come about through millions of unsuccessful gazelles being caught and the successful ones making it through, only to be caught later probably, but after reproducing and passing on the genes that helped them to escape. So the sheer number of deaths that lie behind the sculpting of these beautiful creatures is horrifying and at the same time it's got a kind of savage beauty.

• 3:53Speaker 05

  Wow. Why did you blame this exactly?

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Well, because I was sitting there thinking, I know the cheetahs chase and eat antelopes, but wasn't there a nice cheetah once? That went over to the antelope and said, hi, have a sandwich together? And that maybe something about the cheetah and the, had something to do with an act of kindness? I can't imagine.

• 4:14Speaker 05

  Oh, so you're thinking that maybe it's not just meanness that can sculpt, but maybe niceness can sculpt too?

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Exactly. Niceness as a scalpel.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  Niceness is a scalpel. Ooh. I want to listen to that show. All right.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  Wait a second, we are that show. We should do it then. Let's do it. Today on Radiolab.

• 4:44Speaker 05

  Goodness. Kindness. Selflessness. Altruism. If the world is so cruel, how do you account for it? Yeah. How should we think about it? And when you do see generosity, how do you know it's really generous?

• 5:09Speaker 05

  All right, so we're going to start the show with a story that sort of embodies the last question you asked, about a guy named George Price, who was a mathematician we'd never heard of until our producer, Lynn Levy, told us about him. She heard about it from an author, Orin Harmon, who wrote a book called The Price as in George Price of altruism.

• 5:30Speaker 06

  You know, this is a high school photo.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  So, OK, so the people on the radio can't see the picture. So describe what he looks like.

• 5:36Speaker 06

  Well, I tell you, he looks a bit like sort of some kind of Scandinavian prince in the 17th century. Good-looking guy.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Totally. Definitely something about this guy's eyes.

• 5:48Speaker 06

  His eyes.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 06

  This was described to me by a number of people who knew him. He had a gaze that you sort of walked away from at your own peril. There was something that, you know, he sort of knew things.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  You could start George's story anywhere, but let's start in 1943. George graduates from college, and he's this-

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  Very kinetic kind of guy.

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  Really athletic.

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  He'd swim and surf, and he did a lot of rock climbing.

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  And by all accounts, he was-

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  Incredibly brilliant.

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  And right after college, he starts to kind of bounce through history.

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  He was all over the place.

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  First place he ends up is-

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  The Manhattan Project on uranium enrichment. So he was working as a chemist on the atom bomb. When he was done with that.

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  After a couple of years.

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  He made a 90-degree turn and started working at Bell Labs on transistor research. Solved some very basic problems there and then disappeared like a phantom. Started working at a medical center on oncology research.

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  Meaning cancer.

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  And I remember going to his lab, playing hide and seek, all these bottles and Teps tubes.

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  By this time, George had a wife and two kids.

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  You'd look under the microscope at slides of blood.

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  Anna and Kathleen, but he never really saw them that much.

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  He'd work 56 hours straight without sleeping on benzodrine.

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  And I remember he was always.

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  Stuff like that.

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  Gone a lot.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Hmm, when the kids were still pretty young.

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  We were like five and six.

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  He.

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  Left his family.

• 7:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

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  Just left.

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  Turned another 90-degree corner and began working on computer-aided design.

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  In fact, he invented computer-aided design. He was firing in all directions.

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  What do you think was driving him to keep moving from thing to thing?

• 7:30Speaker 06

  He just wanted to succeed at any cost. It made no difference in what field. And at one point in time, he was corresponding with about five Nobel laureates, each in a different field. He wanted to have one great discovery that would make his name.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  So that's, that's George.

• 7:48Speaker 05

  Wow, quite a guy.

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  Very interesting guy.

• 7:50Speaker 05

  So what happens next?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  So next, what happens is he gets on a boat and he, he goes to London.

• 7:56Speaker 05

  When was this, by the way?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  It's November 1967. And in London, that's where things, for our purposes, start to really happen.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  Boy, what happens in London?

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Well, he starts looking for this question. He goes from library to library. There are 13 libraries that he would hang out at. And the question that he finds for himself, which is weird considering his personal history, is.

• 8:20Speaker 06

  Why family?

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  Like, why do people have families?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Well, like, why do families stick together?

• 8:25Speaker 06

  There are a lot of sort of dynamics within the family where it would make more sense for an individual to sort of break out.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  You know, go it alone.

• 8:33Speaker 06

  Um.

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  Like he had.

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  And yet, family persists. And there should be a good reason for it.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  He even wrote about the question to his daughter.

• 8:41Speaker 07

  Dear Kathleen, my big paper will be on the evolutionary origin of the human family. In most species, the father just mates with the mother and she does all the child-rearing herself. But in the human species, the dominant pattern has involved care by adult males toward their own children. Why did our species evolve this way? It just brings back what kind of a father our father was towards us. And basically, there was kind of this benign neglect.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Hmm. But this question, why family, was only the beginning. Why family led him to a bigger question, which is, why does anybody help anybody?

• 9:28Speaker 06

  Huh. Well, what do you mean?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  If you think about Darwin's idea, survival of the fittest. Think about what that really means. It means if you are a creature, you have two big, important jobs.

• 9:41Speaker 06

  You've got to survive and you've got to be fit.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Right.

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  Whatever that means.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Fitness really means, how many babies can you make? How many babies are you making? And so if you do some stupid, you know, harebrained thing, that means you can't stay alive and/or you can't make babies. That doesn't make any sense.

• 9:56Speaker 06

  Right. And yet, wherever you look in nature...

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  You see creatures doing this.

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  From bacteria...

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  To insects.

• 10:03Speaker 06

  Birds. Bees. Ants and wasps. Fish. I'll give you an example. There's a species of amoeba called Discotelium discoidium, which usually, the amoeba sort of lives on its own, it's a single-celled organism, in the forest. But when resources are low, what it does is it sends out this chemical signal.

• 10:23Speaker 06

  And all the other amoeba, who are also single-celled.

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  They start sending out signals.

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  And they start sort of crawling until they all meet. And they become one slug, which is now a single organism.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  And this slug begins to sort of move along until it finds a place that's windy and sunny. At which point...

• 10:41Speaker 06

  It stops. And the top 20% of the slug, the top 20% amoeba in the head of the slug, begin to create out of their own body a stalk.

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  Which hardens.

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  And they die while doing so.

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  But the stalk allows the bottom 80% to climb up the stalk and to create an orb at the top of the stalk.

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  And from there, all the amoeba that aren't, you know, dead, they can catch a wind.

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  To better pastures.

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  It's like a dandelion.

• 11:25Speaker 06

  So what's happened is that the top 20% have really sacrificed themselves for the back 80%. And that's an amoeba. So you figure, what the hell is happening here? This was a great mystery to Darwin, and Darwin said, "This is in fact the greatest mystery and the greatest riddle, and if I can't answer it, then my theory isn't worth anything."

• 11:44Speaker 02

  And for 100 years, when people talked about evolution, this thing, altruism, was the elephant in the room.

• 11:54Speaker 05

  So we were curious about this. How might you take this elephant, this niceness thing that seems to be everywhere, and shove it back into the mean old theory of evolution? There's gotta be a way. And so we called up Carl Zimmer, who's a journalist we have on the show quite often, who writes a lot about evolution. And he told us that in the 1960s, just as George Price was starting to ask these questions, some scientists came up with a new way of thinking about altruism, a thought experiment, which he ran us through.

• 12:20Speaker 09

  Okay. So, okay, so Robert, do you have siblings? I have a sister. Okay, you have a sister. Sarah. Okay. Let's just imagine that you guys are like home from college, say. Okay. And there's a flood at the Krulwich Manor. And the water's flooding around, and you can see that your sister is about to die.

• 12:46Speaker 09

  If you save your sister's life and you die in the process, your genes, Robert Kralwich's genes, are gone.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  Right, this is the problem.

• 12:55Speaker 09

  Yes. But you and your sister have the same parents.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:00Speaker 09

  So your sister has 50% of your genes.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  So if I rescue her, then half my genes survive?

• 13:06Speaker 09

  Right, 50% move on.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 13:08Speaker 09

  And if you had a sister and a brother,

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  and you save them both, they'd each have 50%.

• 13:15Speaker 05

  So it's a wash.

• 13:16Speaker 09

  And so effectively, it's like saving Robert Kralwich in his entirety.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Mathematically speaking.

• 13:23Speaker 09

  Mathematically speaking, right.

• 13:24Speaker 05

  Can you do this with cousins?

• 13:25Speaker 09

  Yeah, actually. If you step it back to cousins...

• 13:29Speaker 00

  What percentage? That's a quarter in the case of the first cousins? That is?

• 13:33Speaker 09

  It's an eighth.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  So I have to have eight first cousins to equal my full genome?

• 13:38Speaker 09

  Right. Yeah.

• 13:39Speaker 05

  Do you have that many?

• 13:41Speaker 00

  I have 32 third cousins, and that's why I always round them up in a rodeo every year.

• 13:46Speaker 05

  And you place them all together just in case?

• 13:48Speaker 00

  You guys stay here in case something happens to me.

• 13:50Speaker 05

  But here's what I don't get. Like, how does this actually operate? Like, Robert's not gonna sit there while the manor's flooding and be like, "Well, let's see. Hmm, I have a cousin that's an eighth and a second cousin that's a 32nd."

• 13:59Speaker 09

  No, you understand. The math has already been done.

• 14:02Speaker 05

  The math has already been?

• 14:03Speaker 09

  The math has been done by evolution on genes. And those are the genes you've got.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  Oh, so you're saying that evolution has turned the math into an instinct?

• 14:13Speaker 09

  Yeah, you got it.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  I don't think I get it. Like, so what is the instinct here? The "I know I want to save my sister."

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, so here's how I understand it. Since sis has half your genes...

• 14:25Speaker 09

  Yep.

• 14:25Speaker 05

  And since second cousin only has a 32nd, theoretically, your instinct to save your sis should be 16 times stronger than your instinct to save your...

• 14:34Speaker 09

  Oh, no, that's actually roughly proportionally correct.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  Really? But keep in mind, this was just an idea. It's just a thought experiment. Until our guy, George Price, comes along and writes an equation which shows mathematically how an instinct like this could evolve.

• 14:50Speaker 09

  It's very powerful. Okay, so, well, do you want me to just read the letters?

• 14:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  What is the equation? What equals what?

• 14:56Speaker 09

  Okay.

• 14:57Speaker 06

  Okay, so it's, uh...

• 14:59Speaker 09

  W times delta z.

• 15:01Speaker 06

  Equals the covariance of W i comma z i. Plus?

• 15:07Speaker 09

  E.

• 15:08Speaker 06

  We call it E.

• 15:09Speaker 09

  W i delta z i.

• 15:11Speaker 06

  Oh, of course.

• 15:12Speaker 09

  There you go.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  A little complicated. I mean, it was simple a second ago.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  No, it's, yeah, it sounds a little complicated. He's not just dealing with like a simple setup. It's like he's got the traits and how they affect the different groups and how things change over time. So it's a big, there's a lot going on in there.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  All right. Do you understand what you just said?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Not, eh.

• 15:33Speaker 08

  So here, this is a really interesting letter. We should read it.

• 15:37Speaker 06

  When he did write the equation, he walked off the street into the university.

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  In university college of the University of London.

• 15:46Speaker 06

  In London, complete unknown.

• 15:47Speaker 08

  Complete unknown.

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  Had just moved from America. No one knew who he was.

• 15:51Speaker 08

  I went to talk to a Professor Smith.

• 15:53Speaker 06

  And he showed the equation to the professor and said, is this new?

• 15:57Speaker 08

  I felt sure that someone must have discovered it before.

• 16:00Speaker 06

  The professor looked at it and, after a very, very short amount of minutes, gave him an honorary professorship.

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  Keys.

• 16:09Speaker 06

  And the keys to an office.

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  One of the best genetics departments in the world.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  So George is sitting in his office, which, by the way, is on the site of Darwin's old house.

• 16:23Speaker 06

  Whoa.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he's made this big discovery and he's thinking.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Thinking. Thinking.

• 16:32Speaker 06

  Thinking philosophically about what it all meant.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Thinking.

• 16:38Speaker 06

  If I can write a formal, mathematical treatment of the evolution of a trait like altruism, what it means about the trait is that the trait is never really purely altruistic.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  If making a sacrifice helps me in the end or helps my genes...

• 16:59Speaker 05

  Sort of like selfishness in disguise.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  If that's true, the world is a terrible place.

• 17:07Speaker 06

  Because it means that there's no true self, there could never be true selflessness in the world. My math means that there cannot ever be true selflessness. And I can't accept a world like that.

• 17:19Speaker 05

  Why could he suddenly not accept a world like that?

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. Orin thinks it might be because-

• 17:25Speaker 06

  Precisely because he had been so selfish for most of his life. And so he decided in his own life to embark on a program of radical altruism that would prove that there was true selflessness in this world. And that's what led him to the streets of London. In search of homeless people, derelicts, down and outs. And he began by sort of just walking up to them, introducing himself. Hello, my name is George. What's your name? How can I help you?

• 17:55Speaker 05

  To random people on the street?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 08

  Everywhere I go, I keep running into down and out alcoholics to whom I give when I have anything and with whom I sit and drink from their bottle if they offer me a drink.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  He'd buy people sandwiches or give them a few pounds.

• 18:10Speaker 08

  Whether it's by giving them money, cleaning a filthy kitchen-

• 18:13Speaker 06

  And then it got bigger.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  He started giving out keys to his place-

• 18:18Speaker 06

  Inviting these guys into his home.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  People were coming and going. He was giving them food, clothes. And after a few months of charity like that, he was out of money.

• 18:27Speaker 06

  There was one letter that he had written to John Maynard Smith, another great biologist of the era, which said, "John, I'm down to my last 15 p. And I can't wait to get rid of the last 15."

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 18:38Speaker 06

  He thought he was proving his equation wrong.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  So by getting poorer and poorer and giving away all this stuff, he was somehow negating the thing his math seemed to say was inevitable? The selfish instinct?

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, he had this self-preservation instinct. And he was going to fight the self-preservation instinct and he was going to win.

• 18:58Speaker 06

  To sort of beat the mathematics that he himself had written.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  So he was approaching it almost like a math proof.

• 19:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  When he ran out of money, George moved out of his apartment and into this abandoned house in a part of London called Talmors Square.

• 19:14Speaker 10

  Which one does the volume for my headphones?

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Which is where he met Sylvia.

• 19:18Speaker 10

  It was rough. There were just, because there were just poles holding the walls up. Some places had walls.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  She was a young artist, also squatting at the time.

• 19:27Speaker 10

  And the buildings are crumbling, you know. People had made makeshift staircases.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  And George had like a room?

• 19:34Speaker 10

  Well, a few clothes on the floor. Not much. But, you know, you could see he was always thinking. He would go around asking other people, does anybody have shoes they don't want? So and so needs a pair of shoes. You know, that would be part of it. But it might also be like if somebody was sick, getting them to a doctor. Because if you didn't, if you were homeless, it's very hard to have a doctor. But like I say, all this is going on at the same time. He was getting thinner and thinner. A thin little neck and then these clothes, it just hung around him.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  He began writing letters to his daughters.

• 20:14Speaker 06

  Apologizing, weeping.

• 20:17Speaker 10

  Dear Henry, sorry I deserted you like that. And I'm sorry I was such a poor father to you.

• 20:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've been a terrible father.

• 20:23Speaker 10

  Looking at your picture now makes me wish I could do it all over again. Maybe where I come into the picture is he wanted to begin again.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  She says George asked her to marry him over and over.

• 20:35Speaker 10

  First I thought it was kind of a joke. I was saying, George, we can't get married, you know.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  She said no each time. And at a certain point, he gave up.

• 20:46Speaker 10

  It's hard to really, really remember. But it was colder as the winter came on.

• 21:00Speaker 10

  You wouldn't see George as often. He became quieter, I think. I just remember,

• 21:12Speaker 10

  I'm quieter.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  One morning, this guy that was sharing a squat with George.

• 21:17Speaker 06

  Name is Shmuley Katia.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  He was heading out the door.

• 21:20Speaker 06

  He found beneath the door, as he was going out of the building, he found beneath the door a letter. And since they were living in a squat, he was afraid that this was some kind of eviction notice or something like that. And he didn't read English. He couldn't read English. So he ran up the stairs and knocked on George's door because George was the only one who could read English. And when he knocked, the door sort of, kind of, went in a bit. And he could see in the aperture that there was blood all over the linoleum floor. When he had enough of an opening, he could see that George was sitting there with no blood left in his body.

• 21:58Speaker 05

  He killed himself?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  He took a pair of scissors and cut through his carotid artery, which is a very, very sort of terrible death. Poor George.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  Thanks to producer Lynn Levy. For more on George Price, be sure to read Oren Harmon's book, The Price of Altruism. And thanks also to Carl Zimmer. His latest is Microcosm. We'll be right back.

• 22:43Speaker 11

  This week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, will House Democrats try once again for impeachment?

• 22:48Speaker 12

  Let's not make a fetish out of impeachment. Let's not make a taboo out of impeachment. We understand it's not a panacea, but it is an essential tool in the constitutional toolbox. That's always there.

• 22:59Speaker 11

  Congressman Jamie Raskin joins us next time on The New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 23:14Speaker 05

  Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  I'm Robert Krulwich.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Our topic today is?

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Goodness.

• 23:19Speaker 05

  Goodness, selflessness.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  So, we've done the math. The math leaves me a little on the cold side.

• 23:25Speaker 05

  I wonder why. So, you know what? Forget the math. Forget it.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Let's go to the people who do the deeds.

• 23:31Speaker 05

  People who do amazingly brave and heroic things.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 05

  No math required.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  And maybe find out, I don't know.

• 23:38Speaker 05

  What makes them different than the rest of us?

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:43Speaker 05

  That question led us?

• 23:46Speaker 13

  Walter Rikowski.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  To a guy named Walter Rikowski.

• 23:49Speaker 13

  And I'm the executive director and secretary of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  Cool. Well, thanks for doing this.

• 23:53Speaker 13

  OK.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  Can you just give us a little background on the Hero Fund? What is the Carnegie Hero Fund?

• 23:59Speaker 13

  The Carnegie Hero Fund is a private operating foundation that was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1904. And what we do is recognize civilian heroism throughout the United States and Canada by giving an award called the Carnegie Medal. And accompanying the Carnegie Medal is a financial grant.

• 24:17Speaker 05

  How much?

• 24:18Speaker 13

  Well, currently, the amount is $5,000.

• 24:21Speaker 05

  Wow. And how do you guys choose your heroes?

• 24:23Speaker 13

  We judge the heroic acts against a list of requirements.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  So, then you have to have some kind of definition of hero, which includes some and excludes others?

• 24:33Speaker 13

  Yes.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  Perfect.

• 24:35Speaker 13

  A basic definition, which is a civilian.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  One.

• 24:38Speaker 13

  Meaning, no military. Who voluntarily.

• 24:41Speaker 05

  Two.

• 24:42Speaker 13

  Leaves a point of safety.

• 24:43Speaker 05

  Three.

• 24:44Speaker 13

  To risk his own life, or her own life.

• 24:46Speaker 05

  Four.

• 24:46Speaker 13

  To an extraordinary degree.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Five.

• 24:48Speaker 13

  To save, or to attempt to save, the life of another human.

• 24:52Speaker 05

  Six. And how about seven? Why?

• 24:54Speaker 00

  Can you read that one more time?

• 24:55Speaker 13

  OK. I wasn't reading. That just came from memory, so the...

• 24:57Speaker 05

  Oh, OK. Like, what is it that happens in a person's mind at that pivotal moment when they decide to voluntarily.

• 25:03Speaker 13

  Voluntarily.

• 25:04Speaker 05

  Leave a point of safety.

• 25:05Speaker 13

  Leave a point of safety.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  And risk their life to an extraordinary degree.

• 25:07Speaker 13

  To save the life of another human.

• 25:09Speaker 05

  That's what we wanted to know.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  Should we just jump in?

• 25:13Speaker 13

  Okay.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  So the first one we have on our list is Laura Shreik.

• 25:16Speaker 13

  Okay. That's file number 73546, and the award number is 8005.

• 25:22Speaker 14

  I am Laura Shreik. I'm from Mattoon, Illinois, and I currently live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. Laura spoke with our producer, Tim Howard. Okay, so we're going back a little bit here.

• 25:33Speaker 14

  Yeah, 15 years.

• 25:34Speaker 13

  Back in the mid-'90s.

• 25:36Speaker 14

  1995.

• 25:37Speaker 13

  I was a 21-year-old college student.

• 25:39Speaker 14

  And I was driving through the country, and I saw a woman getting mauled by a bull in a pasture.

• 25:48Speaker 13

  So she stopped to see what was going on.

• 25:49Speaker 14

  Jumped out and started yelling at her to see what I could do. The woman was on the ground, and the bull was...

• 25:57Speaker 13

  950-pound Jersey bull.

• 25:59Speaker 14

  Tossing her in the air and back on the ground.

• 26:02Speaker 13

  Wow.

• 26:03Speaker 14

  She was clearly struggling.

• 26:04Speaker 13

  And where were you?

• 26:05Speaker 14

  I was right on the other side of the fence, but the fence was electric.

• 26:12Speaker 05

  So here's the moment that we find fascinating. At this point, Laura can either go forward through thousands of volts of electricity toward an angry bull that will likely maul her too, or she can stay safe.

• 26:33Speaker 14

  I went ahead and just climbed through the fence. And I don't remember ever feeling the electricity.

• 26:39Speaker 05

  She says by the time she got through...

• 26:40Speaker 14

  crazily enough.

• 26:41Speaker 05

  A neighbor had shown up and threw her a piece of pipe.

• 26:43Speaker 14

  Maybe about two feet long.

• 26:45Speaker 13

  So she approached the woman.

• 26:46Speaker 14

  Who was still conscious. The whole time, she's yelling at me, "Hit the bull in the face as hard as you can and don't stop."

• 26:53Speaker 13

  So Miss Shreik went up to the bull and beat it repeatedly with this two-foot length of tubing.

• 27:03Speaker 14

  I think it distracted the bull enough where she was able to get out from under him. And as soon as we were outside the fence, looking back into the pasture, the bull was literally right there at the fence.

• 27:17Speaker 13

  Kicked the ground a few times and snorted.

• 27:19Speaker 14

  He was not happy.

• 27:23Speaker 05

  To our question.

• 27:24Speaker 15

  When you were there at that fence

• 27:26Speaker 14

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:27Speaker 15

  and you had the choice to either stay put or to go through it, what was going through your mind? Was there a calculation there?

• 27:35Speaker 14

  No, I can't really say that. I mean...

• 27:38Speaker 15

  You didn't weigh your options or anything like that?

• 27:40Speaker 14

  I did not, no. It was just, here's the problem. Here's what I need to do. And something needed to happen.

• 27:48Speaker 15

  Huh. So there was no choice moment?

• 27:51Speaker 14

  Not that I recall. No. If nobody came to this woman's rescue, she would die.

• 27:58Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, this is the usual explanation, says Walter. No explanation.

• 28:03Speaker 13

  I couldn't stand there and not do anything. I was compelled to act.

• 28:09Speaker 14

  I didn't really take the time to think about what else could happen.

• 28:12Speaker 16

  I can't say I ever really thought about my own life at that time.

• 28:15Speaker 05

  OK, we just jumped ahead because we thought we'd try again. That's the voice of the next Carnegie hero that Walter told us about.

• 28:21Speaker 13

  Yeah, William David Pennell.

• 28:23Speaker 16

  My name's William Pennell.

• 28:24Speaker 13

  Who is the 8,362nd person to receive the Carnegie Medal.

• 28:30Speaker 05

  Our producer Lynn Levy tracked him down.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Bill, can you hear me?

• 28:32Speaker 16

  Yeah, I can hear you.

• 28:33Speaker 13

  William David Pennell was 37 years old at the time of his heroic act.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Was it 1999?

• 28:39Speaker 16

  Yes, it was early in the morning. It was like...

• 28:42Speaker 13

  3:19 a.m. in a small town near Pittsburgh.

• 28:45Speaker 16

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

• 28:46Speaker 13

  Monongahela, Pennsylvania.

• 28:48Speaker 16

  We was in bed sleeping and my wife heard a loud crash. I actually didn't hear it. And the dog, my one dog was carrying on. So right away, I run down there.

• 28:58Speaker 13

  Mr. Pennell went outside his house. There was a very bad automobile accident. A car crashed head-on into a utility pool.

• 29:05Speaker 16

  Flames was like rippling up the windshield out from under the hood.

• 29:08Speaker 13

  And he responded to the scene wearing only sweatpants.

• 29:11Speaker 16

  No shoes or shirt or nothing on.

• 29:13Speaker 13

  Bare-chested and barefoot.

• 29:16Speaker 05

  So here we are. Bill's standing in front of this ball of fire. There are three drunk teenagers inside that car, though he doesn't know it. He can either, A, do nothing, or B, go in.

• 29:28Speaker 13

  Through the driver's door.

• 29:33Speaker 16

  And this big fella slumped out the door. So I reached in and grabbed a hold of him.

• 29:37Speaker 13

  Around the chest, pulled him from the driver's seat, out to the ground.

• 29:41Speaker 16

  Meantime, the car was just like blazing. And my neighbor was there, she was hollering, "There's more of them in there." So I run back to the vehicle.

• 29:49Speaker 13

  Found that the front seat passenger was trapped in the wreckage.

• 29:53Speaker 16

  I finally got him loose and pulled him out.

• 29:55Speaker 13

  Apparently, Mr. Pennell was aware that a third person was in the car, a third young man. Uh, Mr. Pennell entered the car a third time. By then...

• 30:03Speaker 16

  There was tires blown out.

• 30:05Speaker 13

  Flames had grown to about three feet above the car's roof.

• 30:08Speaker 16

  The interior, like the headliner of the car and stuff, was dripping like plastic down on my back. I mean, I'm in there screaming, you know, "Somebody give me a hand in here."

• 30:22Speaker 16

  But nobody, nobody would help. And, uh, I reached in and grabbed a hold of the kid that was in the back, by the scruff of the neck, and pulled him out.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Alright, so when you were coming out of your house and, and you're looking at that car, what was going through your head?

• 30:35Speaker 16

  Hmm, well, just trying to, try to help. I mean, I, I, I did what any normal person would do. I mean, you know, I just kept saying, "This is somebody's kid," you know what I mean? At the time, my daughter was like 16. And I'm saying to myself, you know, if something, God forbid, would ever happen to her, that I would hope someone would be there to help.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Did you ever talk to your neighbors and ask them why they didn't come in there?

• 31:01Speaker 16

  Uh, you know what, that's, it's funny you brought that up because no, I've never, never brought it up. Never brought it up.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  How come?

• 31:09Speaker 16

  I don't know, I guess, uh, maybe I probably wouldn't like their answer. I, I don't know. Uh, I don't know why I've never asked them out.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  What do you think is the difference between you and, and those other people who just sort of stood by?

• 31:24Speaker 16

  Uh, I, I couldn't answer that. I couldn't answer that.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  So our bull girl, she didn't know. This guy didn't really know either. Somebody must be able to tell us something about what they were thinking at that moment that allowed them, that gave them the courage to do what they did.

• 31:41Speaker 13

  I can't give you a definite answer as to what propels people to do this, no.

• 31:44Speaker 05

  But we took one more shot with Walter. And he told us about a case, that of all the cases he's heard, this is the one that puzzles him the most.

• 31:53Speaker 13

  It's the case of Wesley James Autry, a construction worker from New York, 50-year-old man, who did jump into the track bed in a subway station to remove a fellow, a young man, who had fallen onto the track. The gentleman was 6'180 pounds. He was inert. And yet, Mr. Autry persisted despite the fact that a train was coming. There would come a point, at least in my estimation, where you would have to say, "I have to get out of here because I'm going to be killed. I'm not suicidal." But Mr. Autry didn't think that way. He and I part in this manner.

• 32:34Speaker 13

  What he did was, he lay atop the victim, between the rails, while the train passed over them. In the farthest reaches of my imagination, I can see myself jumping onto a subway track to attempt the rescue. What I can't see myself doing is lying atop the victim while the train passes over me.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Making this story even more nuts? When we finally met up with Wesley Autry on the platform where this incident happened, 135th and Broadway, he explained to us that his daughters had been with him.

• 33:09Speaker 17

  They was OK. How old were your daughters? At that time, my daughter was 4 and 6, and this them there.

• 33:18Speaker 05

  Showed us picture.

• 33:20Speaker 17

  Oh, my God.

• 33:21Speaker 05

  Super cute.

• 33:22Speaker 17

  The one behind me is Shukey, and this the baby, Sashi.

• 33:26Speaker 05

  So when they're standing there, and this guy starts convulsing and then eventually falls off the platform, onto the tracks, right as a train is coming, his choice is pretty stark. In order to save this complete stranger, he's got to leave his daughters behind, potentially without a dad.

• 33:42Speaker 17

  I'm looking at him shaking and going into another seizure. For some strange reason, a boy out of nowhere said, "Don't worry about your own, don't worry about your daughters. You can do this."

• 33:52Speaker 05

  So he jumps. Runs to the guy.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Is he conscious?

• 33:57Speaker 17

  No, no.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Tries to grab the guy's hand.

• 33:59Speaker 17

  And each time I grab his hand, we'll slip apart. And when he slip, I look up, the train is getting closer. I grab his hand again, we'll slip apart. The train is closer.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  Fifty feet, twenty feet, ten feet, and then it's right there. And all he can do is grab the guy, get him in a bear hug, and flatten his body against the guy as much as he can.

• 34:23Speaker 17

  The first train car just grazed my cats.

• 34:26Speaker 05

  Oh my god. Train car went right over them.

• 34:29Speaker 17

  And when the train came to a stop, four to five cars passed over us. I looked them in the eye, I said, "Excuse me, you seem to have a seizure or something. I don't know you, you don't know me." So I just kept talking to him until he came through. And he was like, "Well, where are we?" I'm like, "We're underneath a train." He said, "Well, who are you?" I said, "I came down to save your life." So he kept asking me, "Are we dead, are we in heaven?" I gave him a slight pinch on his arm. He's like, "Ouch." I said, "See, you're very much alive."

• 34:57Speaker 00

  Have you, did you ever ask yourself at this point, like, "What am I doing here?" I mean, he asked it, "What am I doing here?" But what about you?

• 35:04Speaker 17

  I can hear the two ladies, we had my daughter standing in between their legs. I can hear my daughter screaming. So when that train come to a stop, I yelled up from underneath the train, "Excuse me, I'm the father, we're okay. I just want to let my daughters know that I'm okay, because I know that they are worried about me." Everybody start clapping.

• 35:23Speaker 05

  Can I ask you a question? So the point at which you said you heard a voice?

• 35:28Speaker 17

  Yes.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  That said, "I can do this."

• 35:30Speaker 17

  I can do this.

• 35:31Speaker 05

  What is amazing to me is that you left your daughters right here and dive after a guy you don't know.

• 35:38Speaker 17

  He was a stranger, total stranger. But you know what? The mission wasn't completed. I was chose for that.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  You felt chose, like you were...

• 35:47Speaker 17

  I felt chosen. I felt like I was the chosen one.

• 35:50Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  For a religious person, though, I would wonder... Why me?

• 35:56Speaker 17

  Well, you know what?

• 35:59Speaker 17

  Maybe 20 years ago, I was supposed to be at a certain point.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  And then he explained to us exactly why he had jumped. He was the one guy who could. He said, right before his feet left the platform, this one specific moment from his life flashed to mind.

• 36:13Speaker 17

  This thing that happened, you know, I had a gun pulled to my temple, but, you know, it was a misfire, so, you know.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  A gun was put to your head and missed? So you were almost dead for a second or two?

• 36:26Speaker 17

  I was almost dead.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Oh, so you think you might have been spared for a purpose?

• 36:29Speaker 17

  I was spared for a reason.

• 36:31Speaker 05

  After that moment, he says, when the gun went click and he didn't die, he always wondered, why had God spared him that moment? Until he was on the platform and he saw the guy fall off. He says then he knew, this is why.

• 36:45Speaker 17

  I can do this.

• 36:47Speaker 05

  He was just, I can do this?

• 36:48Speaker 17

  I can do this. That voice, when that voice said that you're gonna be okay, I knew everything was gonna work out.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  You know what I think, at the end of the day?

• 37:04Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 37:05Speaker 00

  I don't think that there's an answer to the question we asked. I don't think-

• 37:08Speaker 05

  A hero question?

• 37:09Speaker 00

  Why were you a hero? I don't think that any three of these heroes, I mean, the last one had the longest explanation. He had been selected for some purpose, but does he know why he was chosen? Not a clue.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  See, guy number three gives me something.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  What does he give you?

• 37:24Speaker 05

  Okay, so the first two, right? They have no idea.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  None.

• 37:27Speaker 05

  So there's just something in them that made them act. But guy number three is talking about circumstances. The world prepared him for that moment. Serendipity. So it makes me think, well, what if circumstances are just right? Maybe any of us could do that.

• 37:42Speaker 16

  I get a mailman, he used to say to me all the time, he says, how did you manage to do that up there? How did you manage to pull them kids out? I don't know if I could have done that. I said, well, you know what? Don't say you wouldn't do this or you wouldn't do that till you're put in that situation.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  In fact, when we asked Walter, how many nominations do you get a year? Are they hard to find?

• 38:01Speaker 13

  No, they are not hard at all to find. We are fortunate to be living in a society, regardless of what you hear elsewhere, we are fortunate to be living in a society where people do look out for others, even strangers.

• 38:13Speaker 05

  He told us, they've even had to up their guidelines to make it harder to win.

• 38:16Speaker 13

  Simply because of the vast number of heroic deeds that happen in day-to-day life.

• 38:26Speaker 18

  After some actual fake polls came to light, pollsters are in the hot seat. But they say, don't be too quick to dismiss the entire industry.

• 38:35Speaker 19

  People want to raise taxes on the rich. I can tell you that definitively because we know it from polling. And if we lose trust in polls, we have no way to understand what Americans want to be done.

• 38:48Speaker 18

  On this week's On the Media from WNYC. Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.

• 38:58Speaker 05

  Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  I'm Robert Krillwich. Oh.

• 39:03Speaker 05

  Yes, would you like to say our topic, Robert?

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Our topic today is goodness.

• 39:07Speaker 05

  Niceness.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Or altruism would be another bigger, fatter word.

• 39:11Speaker 05

  Yep. Thus far, we've met a couple of folks, individuals, who have struggled with altruism in some way.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Now, we're going to sort of pull back and go from specifics to grand global.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  Strategy.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:24Speaker 20

  Hello?

• 39:24Speaker 05

  Hello, hello? And we're going to tell you a really cool story, we think, that begins with this guy.

• 39:29Speaker 20

  My name is Robert Axelrod. I'm the Walgreen Professor for the Study of Human Understanding in the Department of Political Science and the Ford School of Public Policy of the University of Michigan. I know, that's a mouthful.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  That was like your dean was like looking over you and says, say it all, please. Say it all.

• 39:48Speaker 20

  Yeah, well, you know, you could just say, I'm a professor of public policy and political science or something.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Well, but before he was all of that, Axelrod, when he was in high school, he was one of those guys who just loved computers.

• 39:59Speaker 20

  Well, yes, in 59, 1960, I hung around the Northwestern University Computer Center.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  59, 60, so what, were those large pieces of furniture in refrigerated buildings?

• 40:11Speaker 20

  They were. In fact, the whole campus had one computer, and they let me use it for 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there.

• 40:17Speaker 05

  And what would you do with the computer?

• 40:18Speaker 20

  What I did, I did a very simple computer simulation of hypothetical life forms and environments for a science project.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Really?

• 40:26Speaker 20

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  You're a pre-geek, is what you are.

• 40:28Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Before the word had been invented.

• 40:29Speaker 20

  I think you could say that.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  But then, in 1962, when Axelrod was down in a computer basement, I guess, somewhere, all over the world, everybody else was watching one of the great dramas in modern times.

• 40:42Speaker 21

  Good evening, my fellow citizens.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Unfold.

• 40:45Speaker 20

  The Cuban Missile Crisis.

• 40:46Speaker 21

  Within the past week... Unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  And Axelrod started thinking about the dilemma we were in.

• 41:00Speaker 20

  Well, each side wants to spend more money buying missiles and things.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  You know, we could build more bombs, but then they could build more bombs. It would be better if they would both stop, but if we stop and they don't...

• 41:11Speaker 05

  That'd be bad.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Very bad.

• 41:12Speaker 20

  Yeah, and so I was interested, what's a... what were the conditions that would allow people to get out of this problem?

• 41:18Speaker 00

  And then he starts thinking, well, wait. Maybe I could use my computer to help me figure out...

• 41:22Speaker 20

  What's a good strategy for this?

• 41:24Speaker 05

  For something like the Cuban Missile Crisis?

• 41:26Speaker 20

  Well, yes, right.

• 41:27Speaker 05

  And what made you think that computers could help with that?

• 41:29Speaker 20

  Well, I came across a simple game called The Prisoner's Dilemma.

• 41:37Speaker 05

  Okay, so The Prisoner's Dilemma is a very famous thought experiment. It's a little tricky to describe, but I got a friend of mine, Andrew Zalay, who's written about The Prisoner's Dilemma in an upcoming book.

• 41:48Speaker 22

  Resilience: The Science of Why Things Bounce Back.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  I got him to lay it out for me. What is The Prisoner's Dilemma?

• 41:54Speaker 22

  So imagine that two bank robbers are hanging out across the street from the First National Bank. And the police pick them up. They've received a tip that these two guys are about to rob the bank.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  Got it?

• 42:09Speaker 22

  Yep.

• 42:09Speaker 05

  So the cops take these two guys back to the station, do the whole law and order thing, put them in different rooms.

• 42:14Speaker 22

  They walk into each one, let's call them Lucky and Joe. And they say to Lucky, "We have enough to make sure that you go away for a six-month sentence."

• 42:27Speaker 05

  But this is not really what the cops want. They want a longer sentence for one of these guys, so they make Lucky an offer.

• 42:33Speaker 22

  If you, Lucky, rat out Joe, and Joe doesn't say anything, you will go free, and Joe will go to jail for 10 years. If the reverse happens...

• 42:45Speaker 05

  Meaning if you say nothing and Joe rats you out?

• 42:47Speaker 22

  You're going to jail for 10 years, and he's gonna walk free.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  If you both end up ratting on each other, you both get five.

• 42:55Speaker 22

  Five years.

• 42:56Speaker 05

  Whereas if you both keep your mouths shut?

• 42:58Speaker 22

  You're each going to jail for six months for loitering.

• 43:01Speaker 05

  So somehow if Lucky and Joe could talk to each other, they'd both say, "Don't speak."

• 43:05Speaker 22

  Absolutely, but the big problem that Lucky and Joe have is they can't talk to each other.

• 43:12Speaker 05

  All right, so you're Lucky, okay? What do you do? Do you rat Joe out or not?

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Do I know this guy?

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Uh-uh.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  At all?

• 43:21Speaker 05

  I mean, you met for this one job, but tomorrow you'll never see him again.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Ever.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  Ever.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  Well, like, if I knew him and I could trust him, then I think I know what I would do.

• 43:30Speaker 05

  You'd keep his mouth shut, because then you'd get six months, because he'd keep his mouth shut.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  It would be a sweet thing.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  Indeed.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  But, see, since I don't know him, what would happen if he rats me out?

• 43:38Speaker 05

  You'd go to jail for ten years. He'd go free, that bastard.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Ten years.

• 43:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  But if I rat him out, then the worst I get is...

• 43:47Speaker 05

  Five years.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  Or, you know, I go away free. I'm totally free.

• 43:52Speaker 05

  Do it, Crow. Say what's in your heart.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  I'm gonna... I'm throwing him under the bus, Jack.

• 43:55Speaker 05

  Yes, throw him under.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  What's his name again?

• 43:57Speaker 05

  Joe.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Joe.

• 43:58Speaker 05

  You see, he's already gone.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  I swear, you don't even remember him. You're dead to me, Joe.

• 44:03Speaker 05

  So you see, in this type of scenario where you don't know the guy, you have a very strong incentive...

• 44:09Speaker 00

  To rat the other guy out.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  Or, as the social scientists would say...

• 44:12Speaker 00

  To defect.

• 44:13Speaker 20

  That's right. If you play it only once, if you only meet somebody once, whatever the other guy does, you're better off defecting against them.

• 44:20Speaker 05

  Just here on out, whenever you hear the word defect, know that it means screw the other guy over.

• 44:24Speaker 20

  But the really interesting stuff happens if you play over and over again, if you're gonna meet the same people again.

• 44:29Speaker 05

  Because now you're thinking, should I help this guy out the next time? If he screwed me, should I screw him?

• 44:34Speaker 21

  But this secret: swift, extraordinary buildup of communist missiles.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  What do you do? You wanna cooperate, but you don't wanna get screwed.

• 44:44Speaker 23

  Right. You know, these kind of thoughts were paramount in those days because the prisoner's dilemma was being played between the two superpowers.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  This is our friend Steve Strogatz, the Cornell mathematician, who says, at that time, all kinds of folks...

• 44:57Speaker 23

  Political scientists, and economists, and psychologists, mathematicians.

• 45:01Speaker 05

  Were writing papers about the prisoner's dilemma.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Literally, and thinking, come on, we've gotta be able to win this game if we're gonna play against the Russians, and we have to do it right.

• 45:10Speaker 20

  Exactly. But there was no consensus on the best way to do it. And so I was interested, what's a good strategy for this?

• 45:17Speaker 00

  And that's when Robert Axelrod, sitting down there in the basement, somewhere in the Midwest, with the big computer, that's when he had his idea.

• 45:25Speaker 23

  His approach, which was really novel at the time, was to conduct a computer tournament. A computer tournament?

• 45:33Speaker 20

  And invite the people that had come up with these different ideas to play with each other.

• 45:38Speaker 23

  In other words, what he said is, "All right, Mr. Wise Guy, you've written so-and-so many articles on The Prisoner's Dilemma, you think you understand it. How about joining this tournament where you have to submit a program that will play Prisoner's Dilemma against programs submitted by the other experts? We'll have a round robin."

• 45:57Speaker 20

  Right, try these different programs against each other.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  So all these computer guys are brought to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, and they all wear tuxedos, and they're all sat down at a table?

• 46:06Speaker 20

  No.

• 46:06Speaker 23

  It's a nice image, but what really happened was everyone submitted their programs to Axelrod.

• 46:11Speaker 20

  They would mail their entries to me. But there was a trophy.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  There was a trophy.

• 46:17Speaker 20

  So I wrote to people, and I said, "If you win, I'll send you a trophy." You know, a little plaque that says you won the computer tournament.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  Okay, so here's the deal. Every program will play every other program 200 times. There will be points in each round, and then Axelrod will total the scores.

• 46:33Speaker 20

  And see what actually worked.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  By which he means, in the long run, even if you lose some rounds here and there, one of these strategies is going to beat all the others, meaning it'll let you survive. Maybe even prosper. That's the game.

• 46:48Speaker 20

  That's right.

• 46:48Speaker 23

  And can you introduce us to some of the contestants?

• 46:51Speaker 20

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 23

  So there was one program called Massive Retaliatory Strike.

• 46:56Speaker 20

  On the first move, it just cooperates.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  But then, as soon as the other program doesn't cooperate?

• 47:01Speaker 23

  It would then retaliate for the rest of the game.

• 47:05Speaker 23

  Like, "Sorry, man, you blew it."

• 47:07Speaker 20

  "I'll never trust you again."

• 47:08Speaker 23

  Yeah, "That's it for you." This is like the way my wife is. Whenever a guy in her earlier life stood her up, that was it. Game over.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  But there were also some trickier programs.

• 47:22Speaker 23

  I mean, some crafty ones tried to make a model of the opponent.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  Like, you mentioned one that was called Tester.

• 47:27Speaker 23

  So Tester would see what you were like. It would start by being mean.

• 47:33Speaker 23

  And then if you start retaliating, it backs off and says, you know, "Ho, ho, chill out. It's okay, man," and you know, and then starts cooperating for a while. Until it throws in another.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  Just to test the other guy, because after all, it's called Tester.

• 47:48Speaker 20

  Yeah, so Tester is kind of designed to see how much it could get away with.

• 47:51Speaker 23

  I mean, it sounds kind of sensible in a way. I mean, mean, but...

• 47:54Speaker 20

  Well, but if you see, if you think about what happens if these two players play each other.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  If Tester plays Massive Retaliation 200 times...

• 48:02Speaker 20

  Pretty soon, the Tester will defect. And then Massive Retaliation will never cooperate again.

• 48:09Speaker 00

  Screw you, pal.

• 48:10Speaker 20

  Yeah, no, screw you.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Screw you.

• 48:12Speaker 20

  Let's go.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Screw me.

• 48:13Speaker 20

  You screw me.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  You come in here.

• 48:14Speaker 20

  Screw you.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  You come in here.

• 48:15Speaker 20

  I'll come through this glass. So in fact, they'll do very badly, both of them.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  When you're sitting there, did you have a hunch as to which would be the most successful program?

• 48:26Speaker 20

  Well, I didn't know, and which is why I wanted to do it. But I did have a hunch that, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of lines of code would be needed to have a pretty competent program.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  So when the mailman delivers the fattest envelope to your house, you're like, "This could be the one."

• 48:42Speaker 20

  Well, yes, right. Now, it didn't turn out that way.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  When it was all said and done, when he loaded all the programs into the computer, when they'd all played each other 200 times, the program that won?

• 48:56Speaker 20

  It's really two lines of code.

• 48:59Speaker 23

  Two lines of code?

• 49:00Speaker 20

  Yeah, it's got a simple name. It's called Tit for Tat.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  First line of code?

• 49:05Speaker 23

  Be... Nice. Nice? Yeah, nice. Nice is a technical word in this game. Nice means I never am nasty first.

• 49:15Speaker 20

  And after that...

• 49:16Speaker 00

  Second line of code?

• 49:17Speaker 20

  It just does what the other player did on the previous move.

• 49:20Speaker 23

  Oh.

• 49:22Speaker 20

  So if the other player has just cooperated, it'll cooperate. And if the other player has just defected, it'll defect.

• 49:27Speaker 23

  It retaliates on the next move. Couldn't be clearer. On the other hand, it only retaliates that one time. I mean, unless provoked further. It does its retaliation, and now bygones are bygones, and that's it. So wait, how exactly did it win? I mean, can you give us a sense of why it won? Okay, so let's suppose, here, let's take an extreme case of some very simple programs. One of them I'll call Jesus.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  Just for the sake of our name.

• 50:00Speaker 23

  Now, the Jesus program cooperates on every turn. That is, it's always, it's always, you know.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Good.

• 50:06Speaker 23

  Yes.

• 50:07Speaker 05

  So the Jesus program is a simple algorithm that says, "Always be good."

• 50:11Speaker 00

  Good, good, good, good, good.

• 50:12Speaker 23

  That's right. And let's say the other program is the Lucifer program, which, no matter what, always is bad.

• 50:20Speaker 05

  Okay. These are your two extremes, says Steve.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  And of course, most programs and most people fall somewhere in the middle.

• 50:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 50:25Speaker 00

  But in tit for tat, you've got a strategy that can swing both ways.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  For instance, with Jesus, tit for tat starts by cooperating, as does Jesus.

• 50:34Speaker 23

  And then they're going to keep cooperating for the whole 200 rounds.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Which is, you know.

• 50:41Speaker 05

  Good.

• 50:42Speaker 23

  But now, let's suppose it plays Lucifer.

• 50:44Speaker 05

  Where there's no chance to cooperate.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  Then, says Steve, tit for tat just plays good defense. So when Lucifer does his thing, tit for tat retaliates.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  And they pretty much keep doing that.

• 50:58Speaker 23

  Yeah.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  And stay even. So in other words.

• 51:00Speaker 23

  It's a very robust program. It elicits cooperation if the opponent has any inclination to cooperate, but it doesn't take any guff.

• 51:09Speaker 05

  And it wins. So you might say, in evolutionary terms, this program?

• 51:14Speaker 00

  Is the fittest.

• 51:15Speaker 23

  So actually, Axelrod played an evolutionary version of his tournament. That is, he had these programs, after they played their tournament, get a chance to reproduce copies of themselves, according to how well they did.

• 51:27Speaker 05

  You mean, the winners would get to have more babies?

• 51:28Speaker 23

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 05

  And then would the babies play each other?

• 51:31Speaker 23

  Yeah, he ran them again. I mean, he ran them for many generations. And so, like, suppose you have a world of Lucifers, and there are a few tit for tat players out there. Can they thrive? Can cooperation emerge in this horribly hostile world?

• 51:45Speaker 05

  Wow, what an interesting question.

• 51:46Speaker 23

  So he looked at that, and the answer was, if you have enough of them, so that they have enough chance of meeting each other, then they can actually invade and take over the world, even if the world starts horribly mean.

• 52:01Speaker 23

  I mean, what I take to be the big message, though, I mean, what always sent chills down my spine is that we see this version of morality around the world. Be upright, forgiving, but retaliatory. I mean, that sounds to me like the Old Testament. It's not turn the other cheek, it's an eye for an eye, but not 10 eyes for an eye. And to think that it's not something that's handed down by our teachers or by God, but that it's something that came from biology. I like that argument personally.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  From biology. Now, do we know whether the math has anything to do with real people in real-life situations? Or are we just abstracting behavior here? Is this wise, or is this just math?

• 52:56Speaker 23

  This is what's so impressive to me about Axelrod's work. So, he's not just playing math games. He tries to tie this to history and politics as seen.

• 53:06Speaker 20

  I like to scan journals. One of my, I wouldn't say it's past Angus, it's part of my profession, but I came across a book called "The Live and Let Live System in World War I."

• 53:17Speaker 05

  So here's where we jump away from the math and the computer tournaments and into something very real.

• 53:22Speaker 24

  The war began late in July 1914.

• 53:26Speaker 05

  That's Stan.

• 53:27Speaker 24

  Stanley Weintraub.

• 53:28Speaker 05

  Expert in World War I.

• 53:29Speaker 24

  Evan Few Professor Emeritus at Penn State.

• 53:32Speaker 05

  And the story that Stan's going to help us tell takes place on what was called "The Western Front," which was basically these two lines of trenches.

• 53:39Speaker 24

  Very close to each other, a few hundred yards apart.

• 53:42Speaker 05

  And they stretched for hundreds of miles. And that fall...

• 53:45Speaker 24

  In November, the weather turned bad. Heavy rains, then it became icy.

• 53:53Speaker 24

  And then slush, and then snow. It became disgusting because the trenches also were filled with rats. Rats. The rats went after not only the food, but after corpses.

• 54:07Speaker 05

  And it was oddly in this miserable, disgusting hellhole that something quite amazing happened. No one quite knows how it started, but one day, maybe around daybreak, let's say, while the two sides were fighting, some of the British soldiers-

• 54:20Speaker 24

  Stop firing long enough to have breakfast.

• 54:26Speaker 05

  And as they were eating, they noticed, hm, the Germans stopped too, to have their breakfast. And when they were both done-

• 54:31Speaker 24

  They'd begin firing again.

• 54:34Speaker 05

  Next morning, same thing. British take their breakfast break at about the same time. The Germans do the same thing. Morning after that, the same thing, and then the next. And after a while-

• 54:43Speaker 20

  Both sides caught on that if they didn't interrupt the other one, then they wouldn't be interrupted.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  On the whole, there is silence.

• 54:56Speaker 05

  This is from a letter a British soldier sent home to his wife at the time.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  After all, if you prevent your enemy from drawing his rations, his remedy is simple. He will prevent you from drawing yours.

• 55:07Speaker 05

  When Axelrod read this-

• 55:08Speaker 20

  I thought, gee, this sounds very familiar.

• 55:11Speaker 05

  Line one of "Tip for Tat," "Be nice first." Now, the Brits probably didn't mean to be nice first when they started the breakfast truce, but it happened, and then the Germans reciprocated, which is line two. Now, keep in mind, these two sides are at war, and implicit in line two is a threat. If you mess with me, I'm gonna mess with you.

• 55:30Speaker 20

  Well, think about snipers, for example. There's letters where they explain where the snipers would shoot at a tree over and over and over again, showing that in fact, they were really accurate, meaning that if they wanted to kill you, they'd get you.

• 55:42Speaker 05

  And this was going on during the breakfast truce. And these little agreements, you know, like, "I'm gonna be nice to you, but I could kick your ass, don't forget." Well, these little truces spread all up and down the Western Front until things really changed.

• 55:56Speaker 05

  Fast forward to December, Christmas Eve.

• 55:58Speaker 24

  The climate was just about freezing on Christmas Eve. And the Germans had a tradition of tabletop Christmas trees, small trees.

• 56:07Speaker 05

  For weeks, he said, the German government had been-

• 56:09Speaker 24

  Shipping small trees, literally, to the trenches. Hundreds and hundreds of trees.

• 56:13Speaker 05

  And that night, on Christmas Eve-

• 56:15Speaker 24

  At dusk, the Germans began putting up their trees-

• 56:17Speaker 05

  Mounted them on the rim of their trench-

• 56:19Speaker 24

  And lit candles on them, singing a Christmas carol.

• 56:27Speaker 24

  The British, who might have been no more than 50 or 70 yards away, crawled forward into no man's land to see better.

• 56:35Speaker 05

  And then they were spotted. Here's a letter from a German soldier sent home to his family, which describes what happened next.

• 56:42Speaker 25

  I shouted to our enemies that we didn't wish to shoot. I said, "We could speak to each other." At first, there was silence.

• 56:51Speaker 05

  And then very slowly, out of the darkness, the British guys approached.

• 56:55Speaker 25

  And so we came together and shook hands.

• 56:59Speaker 26

  See, this is where I start to think, are you making this up? Because this is where it starts to sound sort of crazy to me.

• 57:05Speaker 05

  That's Pat Walters, our producer.

• 57:07Speaker 24

  It sounds as if this is being made up. And the result was, for many decades, people assumed that this was just myth. It couldn't possibly have happened. But we know it had happened because we have the letters that the British and the Germans sent back home. We know that they met in darkness and decided, "Why don't we have a truce in the morning?"

• 57:28Speaker 05

  Next morning, thousands of soldiers put down their rifles, climbed out of their trenches into no man's land, and started hanging out with each other. A lot of us went over and talked to them, and this lasted the whole morning. I talked to several of them, and I must say, they seemed extraordinarily fine men. Soldiers got together, started fires, cooked Christmas dinners-

• 57:48Speaker 24

  Swapped presents and drank.

• 57:51Speaker 05

  The Germans hauled out these enormous-

• 57:52Speaker 24

  Barrels of beer.

• 57:53Speaker 05

  They traded stuff.

• 57:54Speaker 24

  Cigars and trinkets.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  Even helped one another.

• 57:56Speaker 24

  Buried the dead.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  And in some places on the Western Front, this period of goodwill lasted a whole week.

• 58:07Speaker 05

  But then, the generals found out.

• 58:10Speaker 20

  They were very angry about this and they said, "We didn't send you to the front to be nice to the other guys. We sent them to kill them."

• 58:15Speaker 00

  If the general says, "Hey, I want you to shoot those Germans," that's an order.

• 58:21Speaker 20

  Well, then they would...

• 58:22Speaker 00

  Wouldn't that...

• 58:22Speaker 20

  "Oh geez, sorry, General, I missed, but I'll try again better next time."

• 58:25Speaker 00

  I see.

• 58:26Speaker 20

  The way the generals finally figured out how to disrupt this whole thing is they would said, "Okay, you guys go out on a raid and I want you to bring back a prisoner or a corpse."

• 58:36Speaker 05

  In other words, "Show me a scalp." That's an order.

• 58:38Speaker 20

  And that messed things up royally.

• 58:42Speaker 05

  Here's a letter from a British soldier whose unit contained a band, which was apparently pretty common. He writes this letter about one of the moments when the truce vanished.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  At six minutes to midnight, the band opened with "Die Vokte Am Rieh."

• 58:59Speaker 05

  Which is a German patriotic anthem. So, some of the Germans, according to this letter, climbed up onto the rim of their trench to listen to this English band playing their song.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Then, as the last notes sounded, every grenade-firing rifle, trench-mortar, and bomb-throwing machine let fly simultaneously into the German trench.

• 59:26Speaker 05

  So you can imagine the Germans that weren't killed would have felt betrayed. They'd just been hanging out with these guys, and the next night, they would have attacked back, and the British would have attacked them back, and then the Germans would have retaliated against them, and on and on and on.

• 59:41Speaker 20

  And it would kind of echo back and forth forever.

• 59:43Speaker 05

  And that's what happened.

• 59:44Speaker 24

  There were immense casualties, as many as 50,000 casualties in a day.

• 59:50Speaker 05

  And this, says Axelrod, is where you see sort of the dark side of tit-for-tat.

• 59:54Speaker 20

  One of the weaknesses of the tit-for-tat strategy, or one of the problems with it, is these echoes.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  Not just echoes of good, obviously, but echoes of violence.

• 1:00:02Speaker 20

  Could get bad. So, what I found, though, was that instead of playing pure tit-for-tat, where you always defect if the other guy defects...

• 1:00:10Speaker 05

  There are certain circumstances, he says, and this I find completely fascinating, where you want to modify that second line of code, so that you're not always retaliating, you're nearly always retaliating.

• 1:00:21Speaker 20

  Right. If you were a little bit generous, by which I mean, say, 10% of the time, you don't defect, then what happens is that these echoes will stop, and I would call that generous tit-for-tat.

• 1:00:33Speaker 05

  So, this is kind of interesting. Like, we started with Moses, you know, eye for an eye. But here it's saying, maybe for every nine parts Moses, you need one part Jesus.

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  Meaning, like, turn the other cheek?

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  Turn the other cheek.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  It sounds like you've described like a cooking recipe or something.

• 1:00:47Speaker 05

  Well...

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  Like, nine parts, one thing...

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, if you abstracted, it's kind of a recipe. It's a recipe for life.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  But it isn't a recipe. That ignores the deep fact of it. Look, if I were punching you in the face right now, what are you gonna do?

• 1:01:00Speaker 05

  I'm gonna punch you back.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm gonna punch you back. You punch me back, and we're in pain.

• 1:01:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  And somehow, in the middle of being blasted by my powerful fist, you have to come up with the moral courage to say, "I think I'm gonna kiss this guy now." And that is not, as you well know, that is not an easy thing to do.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  All right, but you're making it all personal. My point is, if you zoom out, this is a strategy that just seems to be woven into the fabric of the cosmos. It works for computers, it works for people, it probably works for amoeba, okay? It just works.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  And you think that exists on some higher plane?

• 1:01:35Speaker 05

  I do, I do.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  I don't. I think this is still, as you just called it, very personal. I think a person has to choose to be kind.

• 1:01:43Speaker 05

  All right, I'm gonna make that choice right now, then, okay? Even though you're irritating me, I'm gonna say to you, "Robert, you look very nice today."

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  You know what I'm gonna do to you?

• 1:01:53Speaker 05

  All right, enough of this. Radiolab.org is our online home. You can read lots of stuff there, and you can subscribe to our podcast.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  It's W-W-W dot...

• 1:02:02Speaker 05

  That's implied.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 27

  Hi, I'm Shivam Sharmuri, and I'm from Mumbai, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director.

• 1:02:28Speaker 27

  Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Niyana Sambanthan, Matt Kielty, Mona Madgaukar, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sarah Kari, Anisa Vidza, Aryan Whack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young. With help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujol Mazini,

• 1:03:12Speaker 27

  and Natalie Middleton.

• 1:03:17Speaker 28

  Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.