The Heroic Imagination Project

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Ten years ago, i started what i called he heroic imagination project or a non propet foundation in san francisco. And the idea was that we would use to teach people how to be a hero instead of a passive bystander and an active upstander. The programm is going viral. It's in every high school all over hungary, in poland, eveneven in iran. We have evidence that it works. This reduction bullying reduction and prejudice. A sense of inhanced self esteem, that i now have the power to do good inte tes ways. S just just, it's a heroic imagination dot org.

August 15 marks the 50th anniversary of day one of the Stanford Prison Experiment — one of the most controversial studies in the history of social psychology. In this conversation, Michael Shermer speaks with renowned social psychologist and creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo, exploring the mechanisms that make good people do bad things, how moral people can be seduced into acting immorally, and what this says about the line separating good from evil. His book, The Lucifer Effect, explains why we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” and how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women. Shermer and Zimbardo discuss: Zimbardo’s life mission to understand the nature of evil, the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) and its critics, the nature of human nature, The Dark Triad that leads to violence, obedience to authority, free will/determinism, and how we can teach ourselves to act heroically.