Jad Abumrad

This is a bad show.

So you ask, like, why do people do bad things?

It doesn't actually mean to be bad anyways.

Like, how do you tell the real baddies from the rest of us?

That's how it is.

I'm Jad Abumrad.

I'm Robert Kovach.

This is Radiolab.

The Bad Show.

Okay, so what happened to David that night with his friend got him really curious about murder and badness and all these things we're thinking about.

But it wasn't until a few years later that he learned something that really put what happened that night into context.

By this point, David's moved on to a new university and he's teaching an introductory psychology class.

And I devoted one...

class session to the topic of homicide and why people kill.

And I designed a little questionnaire where I simply asked the students, you know, have you ever thought about killing someone?

And they would circle yes or no.

Then he left some space at the bottom for them to elaborate if they said yes.

And, you know, the class ended and I went back to my office and I just sat at my desk and I started reading these.

And I was just astonished.

to find page after page of yeses, and not just yeses, but these very vivid descriptions about who they would kill, where they do it, when, the precise method.