Making Evil

The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side

By: Dr Julia Shaw

Narrated by: Dr Julia Shaw

Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Why do we think and do evil? What can science teach us about why humans do bad things? And what do our reactions to deviance teach us about ourselves?

Drawing together science, psychology and philosophy, Julia Shaw unlocks the intricacies of the world of criminal psychology. Grappling with thorny dilemmas from 'would I kill baby Hitler?' to 'why do I want to murder my spouse?', Making Evil will give you a better understanding of the world, yourself and your Google search history.

Original, fresh and rigorous, Making Evil shines a searching light into the darker corners of the human psyche, illuminating a modern science of evil.

©2019 Dr. Juila Shaw (P)2019 Canongate Books Ltd

Thesis: Evil is Subjective

You will likely have heard about a few of the experiments or statistics mentioned here, but the author does a good job putting them in context and using them to serve the overall thesis statement.
An interesting read to help you see society (and yourself) in a different light (darkness?).

Overall: more than half good

This book hooked me at the beginning. It is a shorter book compared with some of the "scientific" books I read. Most of the time the author is right on point on how to discuss science: properly citing the references and discussing methodology and results. For the most part she only went on 2 larger digressions, but toward the end the things sink. The final chapters are not so big on references, and she switches gears to the self-help side of the things. The only more sterile discussion than the cliche "use this information to be a better person" is her insistence on semantics. This sterile, almost aesthetic, insistence advocating to deprecate the word "evil" is the lowest point.

a new perspective

reading this book gives you a different perspective of what people usually define as evil. highly recommended.
Julia Shaw has done an amazing job writing and reading the book for us