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piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Podcast: Have You Examined Your Dark Side?
Have you fantasized about killing someone? You have? You are apparently not in the minority, if that is any consolation. As chilling as it sounds, 91 per cent of men and 84 per cent of women have imagined murdering someone, according to a large-scale study conducted by evolutionary psychologist David Buss. Buss goes on to elaborate that killing (which, incidentally, is just one kind of dark behavior) is fundamental to our nature because over the course of human evolution, murder was 'good' and benefited those who did it in the 'game' of reproduction. The Cain and Abel reference is unmistakable.
This is just one of the many fascinating tidbits from this wonderfully dark, and yet, light podcast on the evil lurking inside all of us. Of course, we are all aware of the little bit of bad in us but what about the really bad part? Our darkest innards are perhaps known only to us – and only if we dare to peer deep inside ourselves.
Beginning with an unsettling anecdote by Buss about a mild-mannered friend's murderous tendencies, the podcast examines evil in the larger milieu of othering and deep polarization that the world is witnessing today as well as historically, like in the instance of the Nuremberg trials. Nazi officers such as Adolf Eichmann kept repeating over and over again that they were merely following orders.
The podcast goes on to chat about why certain people are more capable than others of committing evil, what makes only some convert murderous thoughts into action and the perils of obedience. In this context, they take up the famous experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram and weave it in with several anecdotes that manage to upend conventional notions of good and evil (like in the case of a Nobel prize winning chemist who was being chased by US officials for war crimes).
As you near the end of your listen, you tend to feel rather unnerved at how evil is never too far away. And you do feel like looking hard at yourself in the mirror.
