Little did I know that, in the course of researching for that post, I would come across an episode of Explorer seemingly even more precisely relevant to ponerology than that. But that is just what happened.

Ponerology is defined as “the science of evil.” And, to my surprise, I came across a 2008 episode of Explorer actually entitled “Science of Evil.”

Just as in “Born to Rage,” the main framework for this episode’s exploration is established by the narrator early on. This time the guiding quote is this:

“Evil. It is blamed for cruelty beyond our mind’s comprehension. Is it a dark force outside of us that we are all vulnerable to, that we must work to resist? Is it inside of us, a stain on the soul, a dysfunction of the brain? Or just a word used to distance ourselves from inherently human behavior?”

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

“Science of Evil” focuses on four stories:

• One of the “usual suspects” when discussing evil, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, gives a detailed chronology of the development of sadistic events in his famous Stanford prison experiment and discusses its relationship to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, after which he was called as an expert defense witness in the court martial of one of the accused American officers.
• We get a look at notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer through the eyes of Reverend Roy Ratcliff, a minister who met with Dahmer at a maximum security prison in Wisconsin in 1994 to discuss the Bible and ultimately help fulfill Dahmer’s request to be baptized.
• Joshua Greene, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard, speaks about what defines evil and – along with colleague Jonathan Cohen of Princeton’s Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior – introduces us to their fMRI research, imaging people’s brains during moral decision-making to determine the sometimes conflicting neurological processes involved in our sense of right and wrong.
• We follow Aya Schneerson of the United Nations’ World Food Program as she reveals through her work some of the atrocities she has witnessed in the course of distributing food in war-torn Eastern Congo that she considers evil.

As these stories play out, we are led to consider how situational and neurological factors can both play roles in the development of behavior often deemed evil and the implications of what we may discover as we continue teasing apart their relative contributions to the harm and suffering in our world.

National Geographic Explorer’s “Science of Evil” provides a rather cursory overview of some of the questions involved in ponerology. It doesn’t do nearly as much to provide answers to those questions as some of the other resources featured on this site do. But it may, nonetheless, inspire curiosity in a newcomer to these issues.

I write frequently about the fact that, despite the increased level of attention to it that we document here, this topic, the science regarding malicious and neglectful activity – a.k.a. the “science of evil” – is vastly under-discussed and under-promoted in our society. The fact that even I, having researched and written about this topic for years, was unaware until now that this episode of Explorer even existed offers just one more illustration of that. But hopefully, sharing it here will enable it to reach a few more people who will share it with those they know and so on.

I recently learned about an episode of Explorer dedicated to the topic of “the Warrior Gene.”

The episode is entitled “Born to Rage.”

It opens with a question that lies right at the heart of ponerology:

“Are some people born to be violent?”

In its very next lines it answers the question:

“An extraordinary discovery suggests they are. A single gene has been directly associated with violent behavior.”

Our guide through the episode is Henry Rollins, a leading figure in the American punk music scene as lead singer of the bands Black Flag and Rollins Band, now a well-known and accomplished spoken word artist.

Early in the episode, Rollins describes his painful experiences growing up in his family and at school, the violence that was part of his life in punk music and his long struggle with feelings of anger and questions about the reasons behind them.

“Born to Rage” then introduces us to Dutch geneticist Hans Brunner’s groundbreaking discovery of the association between a certain variant of the Monoamine Oxidase A (MAOA) gene – now also known as “the Warrior Gene” – and aggression and violence. We learn the mechanism by which a shortened MAOA gene with reduced activity can predispose men to violence and that a surprisingly high proportion of men have this form of the gene.

The bulk of the documentary involves Rollins meeting with people of various backgrounds with different relationships to violence who are then, along with Rollins himself, tested through a company called Family Tree DNA for the presence of the shortened form of the MAOA gene .

Those whose stories are discussed and who are then tested include:

• The Verdugo twins, a pair of twin brothers previously active since childhood and notorious for their involvement in one of the most violent street gangs in Los Angeles
• A group of men who participate in the highly violent sport of mixed martial arts
• A group of Harley-Davidson bikers
• An ex-Navy SEAL turned ambitious entrepreneur

For some contrast, Rollins also interviews and tests are administered to a group of men who, despite experiences of adversity, bullying and violence in their earlier lives, have come to lead relatively peaceful existences as Buddhist monks.

In the course of the program we learn about:

• The eternal debate over the influence of nature vs. nurture in the development of harmful behavior
• How recent research has brought to light a more significant role than previously understood for “nature” in this interplay
• How those who do carry “the Warrior Gene” can end up taking very different paths in life
• Kevin Beaver’s research on the link between “the Warrior Gene” and involvement in and violence as part of gangs
• The link between “the Warrior Gene” and other behaviors such as financial risk taking
• How this topic evokes controversies regarding genetic screening and even eugenics
• How “the Warrior Gene” influenced the verdict in a murder case with the potential for a death penalty sentence

So check out “Born to Rage” (the video is embedded above) to learn about this fascinating gene and find out which of the people featured in the episode tested positive for it and which did not.

And, if you find yourself intrigued, wondering whether you or someone you know might have “the Warrior Gene,” you and/or they can get tested for it through Family Tree DNA, the same company that provided the testing in this episode of Explorer.