#226: How to Not Be Evil - Dr. Phil Zimbardo
The Tim Ferriss Show
Do You Have a Mental Practice to Help You Avoid Blind Obedience to Authority?
"I think this is a very divisive problem that we have in the United States," he says of blind obedience to authority. "The burden has to be on them to be willing to explain to you why you should do what they say, and it can't be because I said so." He adds: "When you challenge authority, there will be some penalties ... But I still think you have to practice mindful disobedience"
Dr. Philip Zimbardo (@PhilZimbardo) is one of the most distinguished psychologists in the world and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is arguably best known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, in which students were turned into mock prisoners and guards for a continuous 24-hour-a-day study. The experiment was planned for two weeks but terminated after just six days. In this podcast, we explore how we -- as humans -- can do less evil, how you can be a "deviant for day," mindful disobedience, and much more. It was a blast. Apart from the above, Dr. Zimbardo has served as President of the American Psychological Association and designed and narrated the award-winning 26-part PBS series, Discovering Psychology. He has published more than 50 books, including Shyness, The Lucifer Effect, The Time Cure, The Time Paradox, and most recently, Man, Interrupted. Dr. Zimbardo currently lectures worldwide and is actively working to promote his non-profit, The Heroic Imagination Project. His current research looks at the psychology of heroism. The question he poses is: "What pushes some people to become perpetrators of evil, while others act heroically on behalf of those in need?" Please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Philip Zimbardo -- our oldest guest to date! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. It's become especially popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because it provides the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth managers deliver to the ultra wealthy -- but for any account size, at a fraction of the cost. Wealthfront monitors your portfolio every day across more than a dozen asset classes to find opportunities for rebalancing and harvesting tax losses, and now manages more than $5 billion in assets. Unlike old-fashioned private wealth managers, Wealthfront is powered by innovative technology, making it the most tax-efficient, low-cost, hassle-free way to invest. Go to wealthfront.com/tim to take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and it'll show you -- for free -- exactly the portfolio it would recommend. If you want to just take the advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get your first $15,000 managed for free if you decide to go with its services. This podcast is also brought to you by iD Commerce + Logistics. I'm asked all the time about how to scale businesses quickly. Rule number one: remove unnecessary bottlenecks. Many businesses can do so by outsourcing inventory management and fulfillment to a company that makes this its primary focus. iD Commerce + Logistics is just such a company. It helps online retailers and entrepreneurs outgrow their competition by handling all types of details -- from inventory to packing and shipping. I depended on iD to handle these types of details when I launched The 4-Hour Chef so I could focus on promoting the book. As a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 off your start-up fees and costs waived by visiting tim.blog/scale or idcomlog.com/tim.
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