Your Brain on Revenge with Oprah and James Kimmel, Jr.
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Did you have a waiting to exhale moment? You put all his clothes in a pile and burned them? I did. Oh, you did?
What personal experience led James Kimmel Jr. to study revenge?
I did, yes.
I took all the clothes I bought. Listen to you grown-up people in here. This young woman, you're applauding her burning up his clothes. Perfect illustration of, you know, revenge-seeking and revenge addiction. You can control it. Now, let's hear what were the negative consequences for you. None. None?
How does revenge manifest as an addiction?
Okay. Being on the Oprah podcast.
Welcome to the Oprah Podcast. We're in New York City with an audience of our listeners.
What are the psychological effects of seeking revenge?
And I so appreciate all of you and all of you who tell me that you're getting information, enlightenment from our podcast, that it's comforting to you. You get a lot of ahas. I'm so happy. You're going to have a lot of ahas today. because the truth is we are living in a complicated and complex time. And it is my hope to continue using my life in such a way that we can create conversations that can help you kind of take the lens and zoom out to see the bigger picture of a lot of subjects and zoom in to understand what's really underneath so many of the challenges that we all are facing as humans together here on the planet. And one of the things about the human condition that has always troubled me, and I know many of you here and who are listening and watching us too, is the senseless violence
from domestic violence to school shootings. Remember when Columbine just shocked us and now nobody's shocked anymore? To riots and all the way up to war.
What is the Non-Justice System and how does it work?
So my guest today says at the root of almost all violence is one universal human condition. I want to know, those of you who don't know what the show's about today, what do you think that condition is? Insecurities. Insecurities. Fear. Definitely. I would also say anger. Anger. Hatred.
How can forgiveness play a role in overcoming revenge?
Hatred. OK. Yes? I would say vengefulness or revenge.
You win!
Actually, I thought all of the answers were appropriate.
What stories from the audience illustrate the impact of revenge?
Did you see the book before? It's The Science of Revenge. Revenge. He says you say it's revenge. It is revenge, but every person here was right because revenge is always triggered by a grievance, a perception of being wronged or mistreated. And in all of those instances, we're talking about grievances. The grievances flow one direction, and that is to create this motivation and desire to retaliate and hurt the people who hurt you. So this is James Kimmel Jr., is a revenge and violence researcher and lecturer at the psychiatry department at the Yale School of Medicine. Thank you for coming all the way from Yale today to be with us. And his book is called I didn't know until I read it. Actually, I read an article that you wrote, and then that prompted me to get the book and ask the producers about Let's Doing This show on the science of revenge, because it never occurred to me that there was a science of revenge, understanding the world's deadliest addiction and how to overcome it.
And I want to say quickly that when we posted about this particular topic on the Oprah podcast Instagram page, we received nearly 10 times the response we normally do.
How does James Kimmel Jr. define the relationship between revenge and violence?
So there's a lot of people holding revenge out there. And I'd like to start with your personal story. Tell us how you came to be a scientist of this, to study this, the incident that you experienced as a teenager. So when I was a young boy, about 12 years old, my folks moved my brother and I from a suburban home, small suburban home, onto my great-grandfather's farm in central Pennsylvania, which at the time was the most fantastic thing that could ever happen to me as a 12-year-old boy to be on a farm. When I got there, one of the things that I first set out to do was to befriend and learn about and hang out with the other kids on the surrounding farms that were at great distances from our farm.
And so I reached out to them and I found pretty quickly that I wasn't welcomed into their community. And When they sort of rejected me, my response was to try even harder. The harder I tried, the more they pushed back, and the shunning moved on into bullying. And the bullying, as it often starts, it started verbally at first, and then that moved on into a much more aggressive form of bullying as we got older.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:05
2
What personal experience led James Kimmel Jr. to study revenge?
0:05–0:30
3
How does revenge manifest as an addiction?
0:30–0:46
4
What are the psychological effects of seeking revenge?
0:46–1:53
5
What is the Non-Justice System and how does it work?
1:53–2:14
6
How can forgiveness play a role in overcoming revenge?
2:14–2:28
7
What stories from the audience illustrate the impact of revenge?
2:28–3:42
8
How does James Kimmel Jr. define the relationship between revenge and violence?
3:42–1:02:52
Speakers
8 identifiedMore from The Oprah Podcast
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