Adam Smith and the Origins of Good and Evil

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Are babies naturally good or evil? I think the answer is yes. Do you think that this baby morality is kind of like what Devall calls prodomorality in non-human primates? Is it sort of the same stuff, or are babies already more sophisticated than our primate cousins? That's a great question. France de Waal would say I think that a chimp has the same moral powers as a baby. Other scientists like my colleague Laurie Santos would say probably not. The jury is really still out. Because now we're just talking about babies though, right? At all. We'll have to talk more about this. You know, we have to have Paul back on

Paul Bloom joins us in the second segment for a lively discussion about the value of empathy as a guide our moral decisions. And in our first scoop, we talk about Paul's new book (coming in November) Just Babies: The Origin of Good and Evil , racist babies, and how 80s sitcoms changed the world. In the first segment, Dave and Tamler face the music and try to respond to a listener's criticisms of their episode on slurs and offensiveness (Episode 22) .

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