This is hidden brain.
Im Shankar Vedantam.
Philip Zimbardo grew up poor.
I was born in New York City in the South Bronx, and as he.
Went to school and played in his neighborhood, he noticed something.
There were lots of ways for kids from poor families to get into trouble.
One of the things about growing up poor is youre surrounded by evil, meaning people whose job it is to get good kids to do bad things for money.
And even as a little kid, I was always curious about why some kids got seduced and other kids, like me, were able to resist.
Were some kids smarter, tougher?
Lots of people might draw such conclusions.
But from an early age, Phil found himself interested in another explanation, the context in which a good kid would do something bad.
The situation at school James Monroe High School, also in the Bronx.
Phil got close to a classmate who was interested in the same questions, and.
It was a little jewish kid named Stanley Milgrom.
We were in the same class.
We sat side by side.
He was the smartest kid in the class.
He won all the medals at graduation.
So obviously nobody liked him because we were all envious of him.
But he was super smart and super serious.