Speaker 1: Pushkin. On the morning of March thirteenth, nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: a murder took place in Queens, New York that shook
Speaker 1: the entire country. The crime itself was awful, but the
Speaker 1: behavior of bystanders who witnessed the event caused widespread revulsion
Speaker 1: in years of national soul searching. The incident became the
Speaker 1: impetus for setting up the nine one one emergency call
Speaker 1: system that we have today and transformed the path of
Speaker 1: psychological research for decades to come. I first heard the
Speaker 1: story when I took Intro psych as a college freshman
Speaker 1: back in the nineties. I dug out my old textbook
Speaker 1: to see how it was described here. It is on
Speaker 1: page five forty four of Peter Grey's Psychology, second Edition.
Speaker 1: In a normally quiet neighborhood in New York City, a
Speaker 1: young woman named Kitty Genevec was brutally attacked for a
Speaker 1: period of thirty minutes outside her apartment building. Her screams
Speaker 1: drew the attention of at least thirty eight people who
Speaker 1: watched through their apartment windows while she was repeatedly stabbed
Speaker 1: and finally murdered. Not one of the bystanders came to
Speaker 1: her aid or even called the police. The incident stirred
Speaker 1: a national outcry, have we become so inured to horror
Speaker 1: that we simply watch it without lifting a finger? More
Speaker 1: than twenty five years on, I still remember how shocked
Speaker 1: I was by that paragraph. Several dozen people stood there
Speaker 1: and watched kitty scream. How could so many people witness
Speaker 1: something so awful and just do nothing. At the time,
Speaker 1: psychologists were still trying to make sense of the horrors
Speaker 1: of World War Two, and they began to think that
Speaker 1: awful incidents weren't just the result of a small number
Speaker 1: of uncaring people, but might instead reflect a wider and
Speaker 1: more sinister aspect of human nature. Social psychologist John Darley
Speaker 1: and bib Latine decided to test that out In a
Speaker 1: now famous nineteen sixty eight study. They created an experimental emergency.
Speaker 1: They brought college students into the lab, put them inside
Speaker 1: a room all by themselves, and hooked them up to
Speaker 1: a headphone intercom system. An experimenter explained that the subject
Speaker 1: would be taking part in a conversation about college life
Speaker 1: with either one, two, or five other anonymous subjects, all
Speaker 1: of whom were in different rooms. The experimenter then took
Speaker 1: off and the discussion began. But soon into the conversation,
Speaker 1: one of the participants began having a very real sounding emergency.
Speaker 1: He started convulsing and screaming incoherently, saying things like I'm
Speaker 1: having a real problem right now, I'm going to die,
Speaker 1: help seizure. Even though the emergency was staged, the subjects
Speaker 1: believed that the stranger was in real trouble. The scientists
Speaker 1: reported that many of the participants gasped into the microphone,
Speaker 1: My god, what should I do? But Latine and Darley
Speaker 1: wanted to see if the subjects responded by actively trying
Speaker 1: to help, specifically leaving the room to alert the experimenter
Speaker 1: or to look for the stranger who was in distress.
Speaker 1: When subjects thought that they were the only ones to
Speaker 1: hear the strangers fit, eighty five percent of them took action,
Speaker 1: and they tended to do so quickly, often in less
Speaker 1: than a minute. That's the good news, But the bad
Speaker 1: news is that this helping behavior drops significantly when the
Speaker 1: subjects were told that other people were also on the call.
Speaker 1: In fact, less than a third of subjects made any
Speaker 1: move to help when they thought that more than one
Speaker 1: other person was listening. In I've known about these findings
Speaker 1: since I was in undergrad, but I still find them
Speaker 1: so shocking. Nearly seventy percent of subjects in that condition
Speaker 1: heard someone crying out for help while having a potentially
Speaker 1: deadly seizure, and they did nothing. This study and others
Speaker 1: like it demonstrated just how easy it is to be
Speaker 1: apathetic in the face of other people's pain, which is
Speaker 1: pretty bad for our collective happiness. There are lots of
Speaker 1: situations in which others need our help, a colleague who's
Speaker 1: struggling at work, or a neighbor who's feeling a little lonely,
Speaker 1: or a child who's getting bullied, like Kitty Gen and
Speaker 1: Visi's neighbors and latin Ae and Darley's subjects. There are
Speaker 1: times when we see this and just don't intervene. Maybe
Speaker 1: we feel it's not our place or that someone else
Speaker 1: will probably do it, But our inaction means that lots
Speaker 1: of people around us are left hurt and unhappy because
Speaker 1: even though we all know someone should probably do something,
Speaker 1: nobody does. But our inaction also poses a second problem
Speaker 1: for our collective happiness. The science shows that you and
Speaker 1: I would personally be happier if we did something to
Speaker 1: help people in need. Study after study shows that when
Speaker 1: we do nice stuff for other people, we get a
Speaker 1: happiness boost. Give directions to a lost stranger, you feel happier.
Speaker 1: Comfort someone who's upset, you feel happier. Take care of
Speaker 1: an injured person, you feel happier. But latin Ae and
Speaker 1: Darley's work shows that there are lots of situations in
Speaker 1: which we don't step in, especially when it seems like
Speaker 1: the people around us aren't doing anything to help either.
Speaker 1: Kitty Genevici's story and the research that followed has always
Speaker 1: made me really disappointed in human nature, But new research
Speaker 1: suggests that her notorious story of collective apathy may not
Speaker 1: be as clear cut as the textbooks claim, which raises
Speaker 1: an important question. Have we've been given an incorrect picture
Speaker 1: of human nature, one that's making us less happy since
Speaker 1: we don't help whenever the opportunity arises. Our minds are
Speaker 1: constantly telling us what's you to be happy? But what
Speaker 1: if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are
Speaker 1: lying to us, leading us away from what will really
Speaker 1: make us happy. The good news is that understanding the
Speaker 1: science of the mind can point us all back in
Speaker 1: the right direction. You're listening to the Happiest Lab with
Speaker 1: doctor Laurie Sanders. We had a snow day the day
Speaker 1: of Kennedy's inauguration, so we're all sitting at home watching nut.
Speaker 1: This is Bill GENEVEECI. I remember sitting in front of
Speaker 1: it and being mesmerized because, you know, as a kid
Speaker 1: growing up, all these old guys were presidents. Now all
Speaker 1: of a sudden we had this young, healthy guy making
Speaker 1: this statement. Ask, not what your country can do for you,
Speaker 1: ask what you could do for your country. That speech
Speaker 1: resonated with Bill. He's always had a deep sense of
Speaker 1: duty towards his fellow man. He didn't ever want to
Speaker 1: be the sort of person who stands by and doesn't help.
Speaker 1: When Bill graduated from high school, his classmates were busy
Speaker 1: finding ways to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: But not Bill. People who know me go, well, you
Speaker 1: got drafted right, No, No, I volunteered you did? I mean,
Speaker 1: how could you be so stupid? As a marine in combat?
Speaker 1: Bill quickly developed a reputation for helping anyone in need,
Speaker 1: no matter who it was or what the risk level,
Speaker 1: Like the time he heard of an elderly Vietnamese man
Speaker 1: who was hurt inside a dirty cave. I said, well,
Speaker 1: how's he doing? I don't know. We're afraid to go
Speaker 1: in there because it's probably booby trap, So me, of
Speaker 1: course I'm going to go in there. Another time, he
Speaker 1: rescued a woman who had been impaled on a spiked
Speaker 1: booby trap and helped carry her to a chopper in
Speaker 1: order to get her to a hospital. Despite heavy enemy fire.
Speaker 1: The helicopters always drew fire, and as we were putting
Speaker 1: around the helicopter, you could see the holes forming a helicopter.
Speaker 1: You might be wondering, why didn't Bill think twice before
Speaker 1: repeatedly putting his own life in danger to come to
Speaker 1: the aid of perfect strangers. I've grown up with this
Speaker 1: whole philosophy, this whole thing. When it's your time, you
Speaker 1: step up and them. With my sister's experience, it was
Speaker 1: like visceral. It's like people didn't step up, and look
Speaker 1: what that did. As might have guessed from the last name,
Speaker 1: Kitty Genovesi, the young woman murdered in Queen's was related
Speaker 1: to Bill. Kitty was Bill's older sister. Bill was only
Speaker 1: sixteen years old when she was murdered. It's six o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. I'm in bed and I hear something
Speaker 1: going on at the front door. A policeman came to
Speaker 1: the Genovesi house. It took a while for Bill to
Speaker 1: fully comprehend why the cop was there. When he heard
Speaker 1: his mother getting upset, he assumed Kitty had just gotten sick, oh, pendix,
Speaker 1: or maybe she broke a leg or fractured her finger.
Speaker 1: You know. So it was a while before it registered,
Speaker 1: like what. It was just shocking. It wasn't the world
Speaker 1: I came from. Learning that his sister had been stabbed
Speaker 1: to death was crushing, But Bill experienced another devastating blow
Speaker 1: when he read about the attack in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: The article read for more than an hour, thirty eight respectable,
Speaker 1: law abiding citizens in Queen's watched a killer stock and
Speaker 1: stab a woman in three separate attacks in ke Gardens.
Speaker 1: Not one person telephoned the police during the assault. Well,
Speaker 1: I was always like, thirty eight people, I'm witnessing this thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't believe it. What is it to
Speaker 1: pick up the phone. The pain of Kitty's death, plus
Speaker 1: the fact that thirty eight otherwise good people allegedly allowed
Speaker 1: it to happen was too much for Bill's family. We
Speaker 1: all tried to just sort of forget it and put
Speaker 1: it away, partially because our job was to defend mom.
Speaker 1: Because Mom was in a total meltdown state. She literally,
Speaker 1: as they're lowering the coffin, was trying to climb on top.
Speaker 1: Soon after the funeral, Bill's mother had a debilitating stroke.
Speaker 1: In order to help her heal, the entire Genovesi family
Speaker 1: agreed to avoid talking about Kitty's tragedy, but in spite
Speaker 1: of decades of silence, Bill's anger at the apathy of
Speaker 1: those thirty eight witnesses burned on what could be worse?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just what could be worse than you're thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm in trouble, maybe dying. I'm calling now. I know
Speaker 1: people are aware. Light's going on, nobody's doing anything. My
Speaker 1: fellow man has deserted me. What Bill didn't know was
Speaker 1: that he himself would soon experience the terror that comes
Speaker 1: from desperately needing a savior and not knowing if someone
Speaker 1: will actually step up to help. One day, on patrol
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, Bill spotted a strange bamboo steak stuck in
Speaker 1: the mud. He decided to ask a friend what it was.
Speaker 1: Does this look right to you? Boom? It was a
Speaker 1: bomb and Bill was standing right beside it. You actually
Speaker 1: do get thrown into the air and you're flying in
Speaker 1: the air, thinking, oh, this is high. When Bill landed,
Speaker 1: he tried to move but couldn't. Both of his legs
Speaker 1: were badly injured and would later need to be amputated,
Speaker 1: but at the time he wasn't even sure he'd get
Speaker 1: the help needed to make it out with his life.
Speaker 1: A huge firefight broke out between his platoon and the
Speaker 1: enemy who'd just blown him up. Amidst the chaos, it
Speaker 1: didn't look like anyone was coming to Bill's aid. Okay,
Speaker 1: am I just going to be left here? I mean,
Speaker 1: I really had a flashback to what I imagined the
Speaker 1: scene was like with Kitty. No one's coming to help me. God,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling the way she must have felt back then.
Speaker 1: And then I'm sort of in this imagined street scene
Speaker 1: lying next to my sister. We're like just looking at
Speaker 1: each other. And then of course I was bleeding so
Speaker 1: much that then I started to lose consciousness. But Bill's
Speaker 1: story had a different ending than Kitty's. In spite of
Speaker 1: the danger, his fellow Marines didn't leave him to die.
Speaker 1: They put their lives on the line and rushed in
Speaker 1: to save him. Bill looks back on his time in
Speaker 1: Vietnam as painting a very different picture of human nature.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was there long enough to see plenty
Speaker 1: of brave moves by our guys and the enemy, you know,
Speaker 1: to help their compatriots. It made me forget I was
Speaker 1: in a war zone. It was like, this is human
Speaker 1: to h When we get back from the break, we'll
Speaker 1: hear how these experiences caused Bill to question whether Kitty's
Speaker 1: neighbors could really have been so callous and apathetic that night,
Speaker 1: and whether the textbook story of her murder was really true.
Speaker 1: And we'll see that what he learned has big consequences
Speaker 1: for the happiness that all of us could be getting
Speaker 1: by doing more to help others. The Happiness Lab will
Speaker 1: be right back thirty eight eyewitnesses for half an hour
Speaker 1: or watching this, how could that be? After his sister's murder,
Speaker 1: Bill GENEVESI couldn't stop going over the details, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that Kitty's name wasn't even to be said in
Speaker 1: the family home. Bill initially believed what the papers reported
Speaker 1: the same story that I and so many other students
Speaker 1: learn in psych one oh one that thirty eight people
Speaker 1: stood by and watched as Kitty was stabbed, and that
Speaker 1: no one lifted a finger. But that story simply didn't
Speaker 1: jibe with what Bill saw firsthand in Vietnam, that people
Speaker 1: are willing to help those around them, and that they
Speaker 1: often take great joy from doing so. The mismatch between
Speaker 1: Kitty's story and what Bill knew to be true about
Speaker 1: human kindness bothered him for decades, and my natural instinct
Speaker 1: of question, question, question, question, I got to get the
Speaker 1: bottom of this as best I can. After Bill's parents
Speaker 1: passed away, he decided to get to the bottom of things.
Speaker 1: He teamed up with a film crew to reopen Kitty's case.
Speaker 1: Their movie, called The Witness follows Bill tracking down the
Speaker 1: bystanders who allegedly saw Kitty get murdered and asking for
Speaker 1: their version of the events. It was curious to me
Speaker 1: how there were all these discrepancies, But wasn't thirty eight
Speaker 1: witnesses watching for thirty minutes. Many of the people told
Speaker 1: Bill a very different version of what happened that night.
Speaker 1: Some alleged bystanders said that they told police they saw
Speaker 1: and heard nothing, and yet they were still listed in
Speaker 1: the Times article as one of those thirty eight eyewitnesses.
Speaker 1: Others disputed having watched the attack at all. They recalled
Speaker 1: hearing some screams, but said they couldn't actually see anything
Speaker 1: when they looked out their apartment windows. Another big claim
Speaker 1: from my psych text book was that none of the
Speaker 1: neighbors called the police during the attack. Many told Bill
Speaker 1: that actually they did. Yes, I got on the phone
Speaker 1: and called the police. You got on the phone and
Speaker 1: you called the police. Yes, of course, And they said, oh,
Speaker 1: we already got that call, even though the police logs
Speaker 1: from that night didn't reflect it. Bill thinks his interviewees
Speaker 1: were telling the truth. The best I can make out
Speaker 1: was some people did pick up the phone and the
Speaker 1: police weren't being responsive. But the final error in the
Speaker 1: New York Times report is one that could have saved
Speaker 1: Bill and his family a lot of grief over the years,
Speaker 1: the idea that Kitty bled to death all alone. Bill
Speaker 1: interviewed one of Kitty's closest friends, Sophia Ferrar, who lived nearby.
Speaker 1: Sophia told him that she'd woken up when she heard
Speaker 1: someone screaming, but couldn't see anything when she looked out
Speaker 1: the window, so she went back to bed. Twenty minutes later,
Speaker 1: a neighbor rang to say that Kitty was downstairs in
Speaker 1: the hallway hurt, so Sophia rushed to check on her friend.
Speaker 1: When Sophia saw Kitty bleeding and badly injured, she stayed
Speaker 1: with her and even held her until the ambulances arrived.
Speaker 1: It would have been hugely helpful to my parents to
Speaker 1: know that a close friend the kitties was there, rather
Speaker 1: than she was completely alone from first stab to last breath.
Speaker 1: I wasn't the only budding psychologist who was deeply disturbed
Speaker 1: to learn about Kitty's story. Boy, it's just heartbreaking. I mean,
Speaker 1: surely somebody could have done something to step in and
Speaker 1: help her, and I think it contributes to a real
Speaker 1: unease and a sense of frustration and dissatisfaction with the
Speaker 1: human race. This is Ken Brown of the Tippy College
Speaker 1: of Business at the University of Iowa. Ken psych one
Speaker 1: on one course taught him the very same story of
Speaker 1: bystander apathy as minded and the story never sat well
Speaker 1: with him. It just didn't seem to match his real
Speaker 1: life experience. Helping behavior happens every day on every street
Speaker 1: corner in the world, somebody is doing something else, small
Speaker 1: and positive to help other people. So when Ken was
Speaker 1: asked to do a TEDx talk, he decided to revisit
Speaker 1: Kitty's Awful tale. As he dug into new academic research,
Speaker 1: he discovered that Bill wasn't the only one to find
Speaker 1: discrepancies in the textbook version of Kitty's story. The psychologist
Speaker 1: Rachel Manning and her colleagues published an article in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight which did a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: archival research on her murder. Looking back at the original
Speaker 1: legal documents and even conversations with local historians, and their
Speaker 1: formal investigation found exactly what Bill did. Most people who
Speaker 1: were listed as witnesses didn't see anything, and those that
Speaker 1: did hear something found ways to try to help. The
Speaker 1: paper concluded that there's simply no evidence for the claim
Speaker 1: that thirty eight eyewitnesses watched Kitty get murdered and did nothing.
Speaker 1: There's certainly a lot more that says that there were
Speaker 1: good people trying to help that night, as opposed to
Speaker 1: a cruel city that stood silently as Kitty gin Abc
Speaker 1: was murdered. But that paper got Ken wondering If Kitty's
Speaker 1: story didn't play out like the textbook suggest then what
Speaker 1: about the scientific findings that followed after her death. The
Speaker 1: original studies were really only studying one particular type of situation,
Speaker 1: and that's a very strong situation in which an individual
Speaker 1: has been instructed to be passive. Let's think back to
Speaker 1: that Latinee and Darley study I told you about earlier.
Speaker 1: Unlike the witnesses in Kitty's case, Latinee and Darley's subjects
Speaker 1: weren't just passively doing their own thing when a random
Speaker 1: emergency happened. The subjects in their study knew they were
Speaker 1: taking part in an experiment, and a scary looking experimenter
Speaker 1: had just told them to do something very specific. Sit
Speaker 1: in this room and put your headphones on. Listen, do
Speaker 1: these things. I'll be back in fifteen minutes. Don't leave.
Speaker 1: Participants may have really wanted to help that stranger in distress,
Speaker 1: but the instructions they were given by the experimenter could
Speaker 1: have dissuaded them. They told me not to do anything.
Speaker 1: They told me to sit here and do my job.
Speaker 1: That pressure was bad enough for subjects who thought they
Speaker 1: were the only person hearing the emergency, but subjects who
Speaker 1: thought they were listening in with a larger group got
Speaker 1: an extra signal that stepping in was the wrong move.
Speaker 1: They could hear that none of the other subjects seemed
Speaker 1: to be taking action either. Darle In Latina's nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight study is the one that appears in all the textbooks,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't the only experiment to explore the conditions
Speaker 1: under which people decide to help. There were a bunch
Speaker 1: of less famous studies that tended to give subjects a
Speaker 1: bit more independence on how to react. Hey, pay attention
Speaker 1: and if there's a problem, let me know. That's an
Speaker 1: active instruction. And what they found is when you've been
Speaker 1: instructed to be active, you're actually more likely to help
Speaker 1: the more people that are present. It turns out that
Speaker 1: simply telling subjects it's okay to help completely reverses Latinae
Speaker 1: and Darley's original findings. Diffusion of responsibility completely leg goes
Speaker 1: out the window as soon as people think it's okay
Speaker 1: to do something kind for another person. But these results
Speaker 1: raise a different question. What's the thing that sometimes does
Speaker 1: stop good people from helping out? The real operating mechanism
Speaker 1: here is uncertainty. What's the right thing for me to do?
Speaker 1: What does society expect of me? What will happen if
Speaker 1: I step forward? Ken has seen study after study in
Speaker 1: which participants were totally willing to help, even sometimes at
Speaker 1: real personal cost, as long as it was crystal clear
Speaker 1: that helping was something they were supposed to do. And
Speaker 1: if you can reduce the uncertainty and make it clear
Speaker 1: that helping behavior is expected, it's normative, it is what
Speaker 1: good people would do and should do, then you're going
Speaker 1: to see a whole lot more helping behavior. Ken saw
Speaker 1: how uncertainty can affect our tendency to help firsthand. While
Speaker 1: waiting at an airport departure gate. The guy beside me.
Speaker 1: He looked rough, unshaven, uncapped, a big dude, and he
Speaker 1: was sleeping when we started boarding. You know, I sat
Speaker 1: there and wondering, like, should I wake this guy up?
Speaker 1: Kenn went back and forth on what to do. He
Speaker 1: didn't want the man to miss his flight, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't really sure the guy was even on his flight.
Speaker 1: Maybe he'd be pissed if Ken woke him up. I
Speaker 1: was uncertain if nudging him awake would be met with
Speaker 1: gratitude or anger. You know that he might yell at
Speaker 1: me or throttle me. As Ken thought back to all
Speaker 1: the research he'd been reading, he decided to take action
Speaker 1: and wake the guy up. I nudge him a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and he sort of mumbled awake, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, are you going to whatever our flight was?
Speaker 1: And he said yeah, And I said, well, we're on
Speaker 1: last boarding. And I was still kind of nervous. I mean,
Speaker 1: he seemed nice at first, but then he told me
Speaker 1: his story. The man was a pastor, he'd spent the
Speaker 1: last week on a spiritual retreat and had gotten very
Speaker 1: little sleep. He was incredibly grateful. He just ended up
Speaker 1: being one of the nicest people I've ever met in
Speaker 1: my life. If I'm uncertain about whether somebody needs help,
Speaker 1: I just remember that situation. Remember it may not always
Speaker 1: resolve itself positively, but I can always ask the question.
Speaker 1: I can always say, hey, I've noticed that you're struggling
Speaker 1: or you look hurt. Is there anything I can do
Speaker 1: to help you? After talking to Ken, I realize that
Speaker 1: people simply aren't as indifferent to the plight of strangers
Speaker 1: as my psyche text book claimed, and Ken's uncertainty interpretation
Speaker 1: suggests an exciting possibility. If we can find ways to
Speaker 1: reduce people's uncertainty about helping, if we can make it
Speaker 1: normative to do nice stuff for other people, then we
Speaker 1: may be able to increase the kindness we see in society.
Speaker 1: And more kindness in society means more happiness for everybody.
Speaker 1: The science shows that every time we take action to
Speaker 1: help another person, whether with a huge act like saving
Speaker 1: someone's life or with something tiny like donating five bucks
Speaker 1: to charity, that kindness winds up giving us a happiness boost.
Speaker 1: So finding ways to make kindness of the norm would
Speaker 1: be a quick way to make us all feel better,
Speaker 1: and it would come with the added benefit of making
Speaker 1: society a little bit more passionate. But that raises a question,
Speaker 1: can we actually make kindness the norm? I'll tell you
Speaker 1: more when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. We
Speaker 1: were so frustrated as young people with the way that
Speaker 1: our school administration had handled it. When Hannah Mange was
Speaker 1: in tenth grade, a student at her high school died
Speaker 1: by suicide. She and her fellow students were devastated not
Speaker 1: only by their peer's death, but also by the fact
Speaker 1: that Hannah school did a little to acknowledge the tragedy
Speaker 1: or the impact it had on other students. Hannah felt
Speaker 1: like no one was doing anything to help. So we
Speaker 1: created our own memorial. We created our own space to process.
Speaker 1: We rented out our childhood park, and we had just
Speaker 1: created a space for us to commemorate our peer who
Speaker 1: had lost their life. The experience had a profound impact
Speaker 1: on Hannah. She even got to speak about the importance
Speaker 1: of teen stepping up to help others at the White House.
Speaker 1: I saw that kindness was necessary. It wasn't just this soft,
Speaker 1: nice thing, but rather it was like this vital, life
Speaker 1: saving power. After she spoke at the White House, Hannah
Speaker 1: was approached by the director of a foundation focused on
Speaker 1: teen mental health, whose goal is to promote kindness and
Speaker 1: the power of helping. She is one of the most
Speaker 1: influential forces of our time today. Born This Way Foundation
Speaker 1: is the passion project of one of my favorite pop
Speaker 1: stars ladies and gentlemen, Lady Gaga. What I would like
Speaker 1: to say is that it's surprising how many people really
Speaker 1: want to bring human kind together to do great things.
Speaker 1: This might be one of the best days of my life.
Speaker 1: Dagas started Born This Way in collaboration where their co founder,
Speaker 1: Cynthia Germinata. Of course, you know, I don't think she
Speaker 1: could breathe without her music, but this is her real
Speaker 1: purpose in life. In addition to being the foundation's co founder,
Speaker 1: Cynthia is also Lady Gaga's mother, or, in the words
Speaker 1: of my favorite Gaga song, her Mama, Mama. People talk
Speaker 1: about their children being different, and I like to say
Speaker 1: that she was unique growing up, and you know, those
Speaker 1: qualities weren't always really appreciated by her peers. Gaga's uniqueness
Speaker 1: prompted some of the other teams at her school to
Speaker 1: be incredibly cruel. Some of her peers started a Facebook
Speaker 1: page called Stephanie Germinata will Never be Famous. And you
Speaker 1: know they did this because they could see how committed
Speaker 1: she was to her music. This is all she thought about,
Speaker 1: this is all that she did, and you know, the
Speaker 1: bullying and the meanness just continued. She started to feel humiliated, isolated,
Speaker 1: excluded from her peers, and as a result, she started
Speaker 1: to question her self worth and her value and it
Speaker 1: just shattered what was a very very confident young woman.
Speaker 1: The stress caused Stephanie to develop anxiety and depression as
Speaker 1: a middle schooler two mental health issues that she's publicly
Speaker 1: struggled with ever since. But Stephanie's pain came not just
Speaker 1: from the bullying itself, but from the fact that so
Speaker 1: many other students saw what was going on and didn't
Speaker 1: step into help. I think the most difficult thing for
Speaker 1: her there was just not having anybody to rely on. Now,
Speaker 1: over a decade later, Stephanie wants to make sure that
Speaker 1: kids today don't have to go through the callousness that
Speaker 1: she herself experienced. And that's where we come in, and
Speaker 1: we try to understand what young people need, fill those
Speaker 1: gaps for them and equip them with resources. And at
Speaker 1: the heart of that is kindness. We're doing many things
Speaker 1: to show that kindness is cool. The foundation's goal is
Speaker 1: to help teams step in when they see others in need.
Speaker 1: One campaign involves getting teams to intervene as a bystander
Speaker 1: one of their peers is being bullied. Another has people
Speaker 1: pledging to do one random act of kindness every day
Speaker 1: for twenty one days. Since its launch in I Guess
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, now we've recruited over seven million participants, with
Speaker 1: over one hundred and sixty million pledged acts of kindness
Speaker 1: With catchy programs and a charismatic star like Lady Gaga
Speaker 1: at the Helm, the Foundation is making Helping go viral.
Speaker 1: They're getting bystanders all over the world to think of
Speaker 1: stepping in to help someone in need as not only
Speaker 1: cool but also normative. And as we know from the science,
Speaker 1: bystanders are way more willing to step in and help
Speaker 1: when they think that's the expected behavior. And that's where
Speaker 1: interns like Hannah mang Get come in. Recruited at the
Speaker 1: White House, Hannah had been tasked with collecting stories of
Speaker 1: kindness and bystander intervention to publicly share on the Foundation's website,
Speaker 1: with the goal of inspiring even more positive interventions in
Speaker 1: the future. One of her biggest assignments was due just
Speaker 1: after a family vacation to California, but the fun of
Speaker 1: that trip had come to an abrupt when Hannah's brother
Speaker 1: became ill and had to stay behind in a hospital. Unexpectedly,
Speaker 1: Hannah's family was forced to take a red eye flight
Speaker 1: home to regroup and work out what to do next
Speaker 1: to help her brother. Like I was supposed to have
Speaker 1: found kindness in the world and written about it, but
Speaker 1: things were just so stressful that. My plan was to
Speaker 1: text the channel kindness folks and say sorry, like I'm
Speaker 1: not really seeing kindness in the world right now. But
Speaker 1: we get off our flight and we're walking towards baggage
Speaker 1: claim and it's like a completely barren airport and we
Speaker 1: see a fellow passenger from our flight completely collapse and
Speaker 1: fall to the ground. Hannah's parents, who were both doctors,
Speaker 1: rushed over to help. They realized that the man had
Speaker 1: gone into a diabetic shock and desperately needed to increase
Speaker 1: his blood sugar. But the thing was, nobody had any
Speaker 1: anything to eat. Everything was closed. And then we hear
Speaker 1: this like small but powerful voice behind us who says,
Speaker 1: I think I have a Snickers in my launchabole. That
Speaker 1: voice came from Mecca, a nine year old boy who
Speaker 1: taken the cross country flight all by himself. But when
Speaker 1: he saw people rushing to help the collapse me he
Speaker 1: wanted to help to so he shared the candy bar
Speaker 1: he'd been given by his grandma to get him through
Speaker 1: his first solo trip. In the end, Mecca's generous action
Speaker 1: saved the man's life. It was just such a beautiful night,
Speaker 1: I think for all of us, and it was just
Speaker 1: such a symbol of like Mecca was so anxious, my
Speaker 1: family was so anxious, but yet like in this moment
Speaker 1: when he saw someone in need, everyone was able to
Speaker 1: put something aside and help this fellow passenger of ours.
Speaker 1: Hannah wrote up the story of Successful by Standard Intervention
Speaker 1: not just for the Foundation's website, but also for a
Speaker 1: new book entitled Channel Kindness, Stories of Kindness and Community
Speaker 1: that she had a chance to co author not only
Speaker 1: with other student reporters, but also with Lady Gaga herself.
Speaker 1: Something we often say at the Foundation is that kindness
Speaker 1: is contagious, and I think that couldn't be more true,
Speaker 1: even as someone who was there. When I sat down
Speaker 1: and reread that story for the first time in the book,
Speaker 1: I was more hopeful. I felt, you know, and urged
Speaker 1: to be kind of I think that there's so much
Speaker 1: hour and just being reminded of kindness. Hannah is right here,
Speaker 1: there's real power and witnessing acts of kindness. The urban
Speaker 1: legend that sprang up around Kitty Geneves's murder was built
Speaker 1: on the concept that indifference is part of human nature,
Speaker 1: and the scientific work that followed seemed to fit with
Speaker 1: this narrative of callousness. But we now know that Kitty's
Speaker 1: urban legend was just that, an urban legend. The science
Speaker 1: shows that people do help as long as they think
Speaker 1: it's the normal thing to do. And when we start
Speaker 1: hearing that helping is not just normal, but that hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of people are doing it, that's likely to
Speaker 1: have a very very large effect on our collective happiness,
Speaker 1: which would be pretty awesome, because all of us need
Speaker 1: the happiness boost that comes from helping others, and it's
Speaker 1: likely we'll each find ourselves needing a little help every
Speaker 1: now and then too, even if we're as rich and
Speaker 1: famous as Lady Gaga. My daughter was at Bibas one day,
Speaker 1: and this was at a time when she was in
Speaker 1: a lot of physical pain. Sure you know, many of
Speaker 1: your listeners might have read about the fact that she
Speaker 1: had an emergency hip surgery. And a young woman named
Speaker 1: Emma came to the bus. And Emma's been in a
Speaker 1: wheelchair her entire life. Emma has cerebral palsy. Emma has
Speaker 1: had more surgeries than you can count on your hands.
Speaker 1: And she came up to Stephanie and asked her if
Speaker 1: she was okay, and she said, you seem like you're
Speaker 1: in pain and you're not feeling well. So they bonded
Speaker 1: over pain at the bus and they became lifelong friends,
Speaker 1: and it's just a beautiful, heartwarming story. Many of us
Speaker 1: won't ever be faced with some of the more extreme
Speaker 1: situations we've talked about in this episode. We won't be
Speaker 1: called upon to intervene in a violent crime or run
Speaker 1: through a hail of bullets to save a life. But
Speaker 1: all of us have opportunities to intervene to help other
Speaker 1: people in some way, checking in on a friend, donating
Speaker 1: a few bucks to people who need, offering to give
Speaker 1: an ear to someone who's grieving, or checking in on
Speaker 1: a fellow passenger at the departure gate. Our daily lives
Speaker 1: give us lots and lots of chances to be an
Speaker 1: active and caring bystander. All these acts of kindness can
Speaker 1: be a huge happiness booster. Doing nice things for others
Speaker 1: gives us a richer sense of social connection and community.
Speaker 1: It can promote a sense of purpose and meaning, and frankly,
Speaker 1: it just feels good. So let all that kindness rip,
Speaker 1: And if you do no other good deed today, at
Speaker 1: least do this. Let people know that kindness is the norm,
Speaker 1: it's what's expected of you, and it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Evan Biola. Joseph Friedman checked our facts.
Speaker 1: Sophie Crane mckibbon edited our scripts. Emily Anne Vaughan offered
Speaker 1: additional production support. Special thanks to Miela Belle, Carl mcgliorre
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lucarne, Maya Kanig, Nicolemrano, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Royston Vizzer, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis. That
Speaker 1: Pinus Lab was brought to you by Pushkin Industries. And
Speaker 1: meet doctor Laurie Sanders