James Kimmel Jr. (revenge and forgiveness expert)
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Who is James Kimmel Jr.?
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dak Shepherd. I'm joined by Lily Padman.
Hi.
Confusing guest today.
Very.
Very confusing. James Kimmel Jr.
Not.
Not.
The son or father.
Of Jimmy Kimmel.
Correct.
Yes. But do you know Jimmy Kimmel's already a junior? So he would have to be the third.
Oh.
Okay. That's neither here nor there. James Kimmel Jr. is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, a lawyer and the founder and co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies. His previous two books are Suing for Peace and and The Trial of Fallen Angels. And he has a new book out right now that I have not been able to stop thinking about. I think I talked about it in a previous fact check. It's really kind of ruining my enjoyment of revenge movies and my own fantasies. His new book is The Science of Revenge, Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction and How to Overcome It. This was a wild episode.
It was really interesting and important.
I think this group of people studying this really has finally isolated the quintessential ingredient to violence.
Yeah. Revenge.
Revenge. We're all revenge addicted.
Some more than others.
Some more than others.
But he also gives some prescriptive ways of trying to mitigate that.
Yes.
Which is great.
Yes. Forgiveness. It's not sexy, but it works.
It's pretty sexy.
There's not any like really heart-pounding movies about the moment the hero forgives.
It's not passionate.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So our media may take a hit, but ultimately maybe worth it. Please enjoy James Kimmel Jr.
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He's an armchair expert.
Hello, how are you? Doing great, Dax. Welcome. James, nice to meet you. James, nice to meet you, Dax. I like that watch. Thank you. Do you know this, Monica, about fancy watches? A, I don't care at all about this, but these crazy watches that are millions of dollars, it's all about how many complications they have.
I've read that. What does that even mean?
Like how many bullshit mechanisms do they have to create the time? So it'll literally be like 3,000 complications and the back is just this rat's nest of cogs.
The moon phases and other added complication levels.
Nobody really cares about. They make the actual chronography more complicated than it needs to be. It's a complicated machine to perform a simple task. That's what we've got going with a lot of these watches.
I was just reading an article, and I think it was the Wall Street Journal, about this effort in Europe to get more young people to become watchmakers. Because the people that have been around building watches are dying out. Yeah. They've been sponsoring this and some of them are doing their own watches and not really working for the brand names and creating their own names.
What is the Science of Revenge?
It might take them to build one $170,000 watch a couple of years, one person.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Who is James Kimmel Jr.?
0:00–4:16
2
What is the Science of Revenge?
4:16–10:27
3
How does revenge addiction manifest?
10:27–20:42
4
What role does forgiveness play in healing?
20:42–31:46
5
How can we mitigate revenge-driven behavior?
31:46–1:15:23
6
What historical examples illustrate revenge addiction?
1:15:23–1:21:18
7
What can we do to prevent violence driven by revenge?
1:21:18–2:07:31