# Radical Kindness  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Radical Kindness - Show: Hidden Brain - Owner / Host: Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam - Guests: [Abigail Marsh](https://share.snipd.com/person/314cb693-72f1-4088-b737-73777bd073bf) - Episode publish date: 2025-08-04 - Episode AI description: In this discussion, psychologist Abigail Marsh, a Georgetown University expert on altruism, delves into why some individuals risk their lives to help strangers. She highlights fascinating stories of selfless acts, such as a stranger saving a driver in distress and kidney donors giving without expectation. Marsh explores the innate human drive for kindness, revealing how extraordinary altruism can emerge even in crises. Listeners are encouraged to foster their own altruistic tendencies, bridging fear and courage into meaningful actions. - Mentioned books: [Lord of the Flies](https://share.snipd.com/book/3a89b1f7-94af-41bd-b208-acb87530ad4d) by [William Golding](https://share.snipd.com/person/a0a446b5-186f-4d62-b861-e3c8dcb7bdc7), [The Fear Factor](https://share.snipd.com/book/f668e6fc-785d-4821-a783-d5f9b26b9f6a) by [Abigail Marsh](https://share.snipd.com/person/314cb693-72f1-4088-b737-73777bd073bf) - Duration: 01:04:16 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/5e9a3736-3d62-409c-b1e0-d57c2dd324a5) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/c94a26f6-1a03-4020-a574-bec10c59f432) - Export date: 2026-02-17T23:27:25 ## Snips ### [Life-Saving Stranger on Freeway](https://share.snipd.com/snip/401cfb41-3280-4541-b5da-eb662979d1cf) 🎧 03:08 - 08:45 (05:37) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/875a956f-e7ba-48d6-a64d-a89cfbf0d609" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Abigail Marsh's life was saved when a stranger risked his life multiple times to move her disabled car to safety on a busy freeway. - This event sparked her lifelong research into extraordinary altruism and selflessness. #### 💬 Quote > He risked his life three times that night for you. > — Shankar Vedantam Shankar Vedantam recounting Abigail Marsh's freeway rescue #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** 30 years ago, you were a college student. You were driving on Interstate 5 to Tacoma after meeting a friend in Seattle. It was around midnight. I understand this was an extremely busy freeway? Yes, **Abigail Marsh:** it's an incredibly busy freeway, very heavily trafficked. I was coming into Tacoma on I-5 South from Seattle when the freeway rises up over an overpass, and so there are no shoulders whatsoever. And yet somehow a dog had made it onto the freeway that night, and it ran across the freeway right in front of my car. And I did what I now know you should never do, which is I swerved to try to avoid it. And unfortunately, I hit it anyways. And the combination of hitting the dog and swerving sharply sent my car into a series of fishtails across several lanes of freeway. It's a miracle I didn't hit anybody. And then it ended up, as I tried to wrestle back control of the car, spinning in these huge donuts around and around until finally it came to a rest in the fast lane of the freeway facing backward into the oncoming traffic just past the crest of the overpass. **Shankar Vedantam:** So your car is now sitting on the highway facing in the wrong direction in the fast lane? In the fast **Abigail Marsh:** lane. And engine had died as a result of all of this spinning around. And there's no shoulder because it's an overpass that didn't have any end. So there was nowhere I could drive the car to or that I could jump out of the car and run to. I was just stuck in this fast lane of the freeway with cars barely swerving in time to avoid me because they just, you know, just caught sight of me as they were coming across the crest of the overpass. And so my car would shake every time these big cars and semis would swerve around it at the last minute. And I knew, I just knew it was a matter of time until one of them was going to hit me. **Shankar Vedantam:** Well, this is absolutely terrifying, Abby, and you had no way of moving the car. You had no way of getting out of the car. The car wouldn't start. You must have thought these were your last moments. I **Abigail Marsh:** did. I did. It was the most terrified I've ever been in my life. And I remember trying over and over to turn the car back on, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get the engine to re-engage. I remember turning on the brights. I turned on the flashers just to try to alert people to my presence but I didn't have a phone because it was the 90s and so there was absolutely nothing else I could do and I thought that eventually I was going to get hit and I would either get very badly hurt or killed **Shankar Vedantam:** So while this is happening, cars are coming by you at great velocity and swerving and missing you at the very last second. Something happens now on the other side of your car, on the passenger side. Tell me what happens. **Abigail Marsh:** Yeah, one of the great shocks of my life. So it was a summer night and the windows were rolled down. And I was very surprised in the middle of all this to hear a knock on the passenger side window, which because of which way I was facing was on the very narrow sort of tiny ridge on the edge of the fast lane. wearing as best as I can recollect a suit. And he had a shaved head and chains around his knack gold jewelry and sunglasses, even though it was the middle of the night. **Shankar Vedantam:** Abby had a lot to be worried about in that moment. But the first thought that leaped to her mind was about the stranger's intentions. He asked if she needed help. **Abigail Marsh:** And I remember the silly thought flashing through my head of like, oh, no, oh, no. You know, this is a stranger. I'm not supposed to let strangers into my mom's car. And he said, you look like you could use some help. It was quite an understatement. And of course, I said, yeah, I do. **Shankar Vedantam:** What did he say? What did he advise you to do? **Abigail Marsh:** So then he said, okay, do you mind if I get into the driver's seat? So I said, okay, that's fine. And I scooched myself over the center console into the passenger seat while he waited for a break in the traffic, which took a minute. Because, of course, all while we're talking to each other, the cars are still continuing to blow by. So he waited for a break, ran around the car at top speed, opened the driver's door and hopped in the driver's seat. So now he's put himself in great danger because now we're both going to get killed if we get hit. He figured out the car was still in drive, which is why I couldn't get it to turn back on. Put it in park, turn it back on, waited again for a break and all the cars blowing by us. And then he gunned it real fast and arced us across the freeway into the off-ramp on the other side, or the sort of stripey section by the off-ramp where his car was parked. And there we came to a stop. And we were more or less safe at that point. And again, I remember the sound of his voice as he looked at me. I'm gray, I'm sure, and sweaty and shaking. I felt awful. And he said, you're going to be okay? Do you need me to follow you home? And I said, no, no, I'm going to be okay. I'll be okay. You know, I wasn't thinking quite straight in the moment. And he said, okay, you take care of yourself. And out of the car he got and went back to his own car and drove off into the night. --- ### [Altruists' Amygdala and Empathy](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d79d1a4-66ce-4b16-9fd9-978d8470a8a1) 🎧 16:55 - 20:41 (03:46) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/02b4f293-0e43-4b8f-b824-865b49c539fc" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Extraordinary altruists have larger amygdalas and heightened sensitivity to others' fear, the opposite of psychopathic individuals. - Their brains are wired to recognize distress quickly and deeply, underpinning their selfless behavior. #### 💬 Quote > The altruistic people that we tested... were very specifically sensitive to other people's distress. > — Abigail Marsh Abigail Marsh on brain differences in altruists #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** once you got these volunteers into your lab and started to study them, you found that extreme altruists, as you came to call them, display a very high sensitivity to when other people might be frightened. Tell me about this research, Abby. The **Abigail Marsh:** germ of this research was research I'd conducted previously in people were at the opposite end of what I call the caring continuum. So people vary quite a bit in their capacity to care about other people's welfare. And at the low end of this continuum are people who are psychopathic. So people who have callous personalities and engage in frequent antisocial behavior. And what we've known from over a decade of research with people who are psychopathic is that they tend to be insensitive to other people's distress. They have trouble recognizing it. So if they see the face of somebody who's afraid, they might not even know what the expression is called. A friend of mine, Essie Beating, in the United Kingdom was testing a psychopathic person in a jail once about their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. And this man failed to recognize every single fearful facial expression that she showed him. And he knew he was doing badly, and that is a pretty bad performance even for somebody who's psychopathic, because when he got to the very last fearful expression, he said, you know, I don't know what that expression is called, but I know that's what people look like right before you stab them. And this reveals a real sort of emotional blindness to other people's distress, which may help us understand why people who are psychopathic are so callous in response to other people's distress. They don't even really know how to interpret it very well. And the origin of that is partly deficits in a brain structure called the amygdala. And the amygdala is a complicated brain structure. It does a lot of different things, but it's not essential for doing that many things. One of the things that seems to be really important for doing is representing fear in other people. So generating an internal representation of that state that helps you then recognize it in others. And what we hypothesized at the beginning of our research with altruistic people is that if very uncaring people seem to be unusually insensitive to other people's distress, and that is underpinned by deficits in a structure called the amygdala, both in its reduced activation in response to other people's distress and its lower volume. So people who are psychopathic have amygdalas that are unusually small on average. Maybe people who are unusually caring and highly altruistic will look exactly the opposite. They'll be sensitive to other people's distress, better recognizing it, and we would see increased amygdala activation in response to that distress and maybe larger amygdalas as well. So those were hypotheses setting out. Is **Shankar Vedantam:** that what you found? That **Abigail Marsh:** was exactly what we found. The altruistic people that we tested on our very first study looked the opposite of people who were psychopathic. They were relatively better at recognizing other people's fear and they were not better at recognizing other expressions. So we also tested how well they recognized anger and they didn't recognize anger better. In fact, they recognized it a little worse, but they were very specifically sensitive to other people's distress. And we also found that in our brain scanning studies, their amygdala showed more activation in response to images of other people's fear. Whereas again, it not show that response to other people's anger. And finally, their amygdalas were on average about 8% larger than in a comparable group of adults that we also tested who were not altruistic kidney donors. --- ### [Altruists' Wide Circle of Caring](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ac1698d9-ce5b-497c-8eed-f3fab9f8e84e) 🎧 20:41 - 22:34 (01:52) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/598e7df1-20c8-46c2-a2ef-98417d6afbad" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Extraordinary altruists show almost no social discounting, valuing strangers' welfare nearly as much as close relations. - Their circle of caring extends far beyond usual social boundaries, reflecting their wide empathy. #### 💬 Quote > It's almost as if the circle of who they thought as being connected to them was just much, much larger. > — Shankar Vedantam Discussing social discounting in altruists #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** So another characteristic of extraordinary altruists that you identified was a dramatically reduced tendency to engage in what psychologists call social discounting. What is social discounting, Abby? **Abigail Marsh:** So social discounting reflects how you value other people's outcomes as a function of their social distance from you. Basically, how much are you willing to sacrifice to benefit another person? And most people in standard social discounting tasks are very willing to sacrifice to benefit people close to them, but their willingness to sacrifice drops dramatically, hyperbolically, as people become more socially distant. So **Shankar Vedantam:** in other words, if I have, you know, $100, sharing it with a partner or a parent or a child, very easy to do., **Abigail Marsh:** to benefit people that they don't know or barely know. And what did you **Shankar Vedantam:** find with the extraordinary altruists? When **Abigail Marsh:** we tested the altruistic kidney donors in the social discounting task, we found a curve unlike any that's ever been found in any social discounting task, which was a curve that dropped almost not at all across social distances. are willing to sacrifice as much to help a stranger as most people are willing to sacrifice to help somewhere between a distant friend and an acquaintance, even though they don't know that person at all. That person's welfare clearly intrinsically matters to them. **Shankar Vedantam:** So in other words, it's almost as if the circle of who they thought as being connected to them was just much, much larger. Exactly. --- ### [Altruistic Kidney Donor Harold Mintz](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5aeec27e-b483-4431-8f9a-97a80205672f) 🎧 22:59 - 24:50 (01:50) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/125b95fa-e0bc-4735-816d-28bfe1c51fee" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Harold Mintz donated a kidney to a stranger he never met, initiating a friendship with the recipient. - His decision felt intuitive, embodying the purest form of altruism without expecting anything in return. #### 💬 Quote > If you have two kidneys... the choice to donate to them is the obvious choice. > — Abigail Marsh Abigail Marsh describing kidney donor Harold Mintz's altruism #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Tell me his story, Abby. **Abigail Marsh:** So Harold was one of the first altruistic kidney donors in the country, and he was the first in Washington, D.C. He actually donated to Georgetown, where I work. And Harold came up with the idea to donate a kidney to a stranger on his own. He had never known anybody who'd done it before, he knew you could donate bone marrow to strangers and he knew you could donate kidneys to people you know. And so he thought, hey, if I could donate a kidney to somebody I know and I don't know anybody that needs a kidney, why don't I just donate to somebody that needs a kidney? And so he called around to several transplantation organizations and they sent him a bunch of pamphlets for deceased donation. And he said, that's not what I want. I want to donate to somebody now who needs my kidney. And he didn't hear anything for a while. And then eventually they ran a pilot program in D.C. to try non-directed altruistic kidney donation. The person that was chosen to receive Harold's kidney was a woman who had no eligible donors in her own circle and other people had been tested and was dying of kidney disease. It's an awful disease. Living on dialysis is like a living death is how people describe it. to her. He went into surgery, had a kidney removed. It was planted into his recipient. Transplant surgeons describe it as a Lazarus effect. When there are very few diseases like this that you can perform a surgery, the kidney starts working immediately. It starts producing urine right away. And the person is like brought back to life. You know, that a plant that has been watered in a time lapse is how quickly they're restored to health and life and vigor. And it was a tremendous success. I'm sure it contributed to the fact that we now have programs like this on a wider scale. And Harold and his recipients remain very good friends to this day. --- ### [Humility in Altruists' Mindset](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b276d8a6-298a-4f15-b5b5-0158ab79b59a) 🎧 25:50 - 27:17 (01:27) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b0fc448d-c365-4b8a-a6c2-1123cf28adc7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Altruists typically display humility, seeing their selflessness as ordinary rather than exceptional. - This mindset fosters sharing their resources freely, not holding themselves as inherently more special than others. #### 💬 Quote > They think if you have two kidneys... the choice to donate to them is the obvious choice. > — Abigail Marsh Explaining altruists' humility about their actions #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Another distinguishing characteristic of these altruists was their striking sense of humility. Can you talk about this idea, Abby? **Abigail Marsh:** Yes, it was something I was really surprised to discover when I started working with altruistic kidney donors. And I thought maybe how humble they were about their choice to donate was sort of, you know, just a quirky little bug. But I now believe it's an intrinsic feature of the decision to help other people. Many donors I've worked with, I would say most donors, including Harold, have told me that they're happy to take part in my research, they're glad I'm doing it, but they're pretty sure I'm not going to find any differences between them and other adults because there's nothing special about them or anybody else who wants to donate a kidney. It's just a function of having the right information, being in the right place at the right time. It's something anybody could do. And I've had many altruists reassure me that there's nothing special about them. And that, to me, makes perfect sense. Because if you really do believe that you're the most special person, why would you want to share with somebody less special? That doesn't make any sense. The most special person should have all the kidneys. But if you're such a humble person that you don't think you're any more special than anybody else, it does make complete sense that you would say, well, why should me, who's not in any way special, have all the kidney resources? It really makes much more sense to allocate them among anybody who happens to need one. --- ### [Danny Trejo’s Heroic Rescue](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e6a503db-2924-4fc8-b4ac-8c48d033570b) 🎧 27:44 - 29:23 (01:39) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/25c35a0a-b2f4-4a9a-900a-89c29010194d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Actor Danny Trejo heroically rescued a trapped boy from an overturned SUV despite the imminent danger of a gas leak. - Trejo humbly stated this was his duty to serve and help, not something extraordinary. #### 💬 Quote > I was just doing what any of us should do and what any of us could do in a similar situation. > — Abigail Marsh Discussing Danny Trejo's selfless rescue act #### 📚 Transcript **Abigail Marsh:** And so how did he come to your attention as an altruist? for something very altruistic and heroic that he did. He was running errands, I think, near his home one day when he witnessed a terrifying car crash when a sedan next to his car collided with an SUV, and it resulted in this chain reaction that flipped this SUV upside down, and inside was trapped a little boy who I believe had special needs along with his mother and his grandma. And Trejo, as is often the case in these situations, reacted immediately. He could smell gas trickling out of the wreckage of the cars, but despite that, he crawled into the SUV, which was upside down at that point, and figured out how to extract the boy from the car and then sat by him and helped keep him calm while emergency rescuers got the rest of his family out of the car. So I understand that when people asked **Shankar Vedantam:** him afterwards, you know, why he had done what he did, again, he didn't draw particular attention to himself. He didn't single himself out as special. **Abigail Marsh:** Absolutely. His quotation was perfectly characteristic of how so many altruists and heroes describe their own actions. What he said afterward was, people have to understand that God put us on this earth to help each other. We're here to serve. here to welcome. We're here to love. That's what we're supposed to be doing. I'm not special. --- ### [Hopeful Appraisal Sparks Action](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d312f2fd-733a-4299-8800-fe08ac35cc99) 🎧 29:47 - 31:05 (01:17) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/41bdda64-756a-42b6-a247-604ae1f4866e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Altruists appraise distressing situations with hope and agency, motivating genuine help rather than avoidance. - They believe their actions can alleviate suffering, which propels them into immediate selfless action. #### 💬 Quote > Having a more hopeful appraisal pattern was associated with being more likely to help people in need. > — Abigail Marsh On how altruists interpret and respond to distressing scenarios #### 📚 Transcript **Abigail Marsh:** Well, the researchers who study emotion know that there are different ways that you can appraise emotional situations or interpret those situations that do change the way that you're likely to act in those situations. When you see a distressing situation, if somebody's in danger, for example, it's very upsetting. And sometimes people tend to interpret those situations in a that reduces their own negative feelings, but doesn't induce them to act. For example, there's probably nothing I can do. Somebody else will help, for example. But there are also hopeful ways that you could appraise situations like that. For example, I bet that there's something I can do to alleviate that person's distress. Maybe I could donate money in a way that would help people like this elsewhere in the world. And we did find in a study that we conducted of altruists and controls that having a more hopeful appraisal pattern was associated with being more likely to help people in need. You **Shankar Vedantam:** may have noticed a pattern in the extreme altruists that Abby has studied. Like Danny Trejo or the man who rescued Abby on the freeway, they don't arrive at the decision to be altruistic by thinking through all the pros and cons. They arrive at their decisions quickly, intuitively, sometimes instantaneously. One --- ### [Lenny Skutnik's Icy River Rescue](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6bd1c655-6e6f-4d48-8696-b1620a231a52) 🎧 31:52 - 33:05 (01:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ad66809c-3087-41b4-b623-a646254528a1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Lenny Skutnik leapt into an icy river after a plane crash to save a drowning woman despite severe hypothermia risk. - His bravery illustrates that courage often involves overcoming fear rather than absence of it. #### 💬 Quote > He walked down to the banks... took off his shoes and coat and leaped into the river. > — Abigail Marsh Describing Lenny Skutnik's heroic rescue after the 1982 plane crash #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Can you tell me his story, Abby? Lenny **Abigail Marsh:** Skutnik was a government worker who, in the early 80s, was carpooling home from his job in D.C. to Virginia. And while he was in the car, a plane taking off from Reagan National Airport crashed into the Potomac River. It was a really horrific plane crash. And of course, all the traffic backed up on the bridge, and Skutnik ended up getting out and walking to the bridge and seeing all of these people who miraculously had survived the crash, but now were slowly freezing to death and or drowning in the icy river. It was the of winter and the de-icing problem had been why the plane had crashed. And obviously it took crews a long time to get to the scene of the crash in part because of all the backups. And Skutnik incredibly decided that he was going to help. And he walked down to the banks of the Potomac, and I think he took off his shoes and his coat and leaped into the river and ended up rescuing a woman who'd been clinging, I think, to a piece of ice or a piece of wreckage in the river and bringing her to shore at enormous risk to his own life. --- ### [Human Altruism Linked to Alloparenting](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c1afa02d-bb81-4524-854e-3f01deaadbe9) 🎧 35:43 - 37:35 (01:51) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d66f9003-6b3e-4b80-9454-09371ea23fd4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Humans are uniquely altruistic among primates due to alloparental care, nurturing infants not their own. - This evolutionary trait expands our capacity to care beyond kin to strangers and wider social groups. #### 💬 Quote > Humans are the most altruistic... because we are an alloparental species. > — Abigail Marsh Abigail Marsh explaining the evolutionary basis of human altruism #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** But actually, you say that the capacity to care deeply about others is woven into our species as a whole? **Abigail Marsh:** Absolutely. I think many people are surprised when I say that humans are an unusually altruistic species, but there's no question about it. We are. If you look across, for example, other primate species, humans are the most altruistic. They're the most likely to share freely with other people with no expectation of benefit for themselves. And the reason seems to be, maybe a little bit surprisingly, that humans are also what's called an alloparental species. And that means that human adults are prepared to care and do care for infants who are not their own. And that's not something you see in that many primate species. But if you look across species, the very best predictor of how altruistic a species is, is how much care they provide for babies that are not their own. And humans do this a lot. And it seems to be the best explanation for why we're so altruistic. And **Shankar Vedantam:** of course, when you think about doctors or the medical system or nurses, it's the same idea, right? People are devoted in some ways to caring for others in a way that really is very unusual when you think about it and think about what other species do. **Abigail Marsh:** It's truly astonishing. And I think one of the reasons it's easy to forget is we spend so much of our life immersed in stories about the worst things that happen all around the world, which, of course, unfortunately, is what, you know, many social media and some traditional media sources are incentivized to tell us about. And all that information pours into our brain about the terrible things that people do. And it can leave people with sort of a cynical view that, oh, humans are so awful. We do such awful things. But what I always tell people is think about the interactions you have. Think about the people around you in your real life that you spend time with and that you interact with. How have those interactions been? Have those people genuinely been pretty helpful, pretty cooperative, willing to help each other out in a pinch? --- ### [Crisis Triggers Altruistic Behavior](https://share.snipd.com/snip/16cf25b2-62f0-41da-a626-2b9ee9e7337a) 🎧 42:54 - 43:49 (00:55) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/265bde55-88f2-4f28-af85-a6bf918b6cb3" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Crises often unlock altruism, increasing helping behaviors despite risks and fear. - Urgency and acute fear inspire people to prioritize others' welfare alongside their own survival. #### 💬 Quote > The acute fear response we get in times of disaster actually motivates us. > — Abigail Marsh Explaining why people's altruism increases after disasters #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** It **Abigail Marsh:** may seem a little bit paradoxical that if improved well-being leads to greater altruism, that times of crisis could also lead to greater altruism, but both things seem to be true. This fact is very surprising because we're all familiar with stories like The Lord of the Flies, where a disaster setting brings out the worst in people and causes them to turn on one another. But if you look at real life scenarios of crises and disasters, it's astonishingly common how often people actually band together to help one another. We saw after the COVID-19 pandemic that globally altruistic behavior went up in the aftermath of the pandemic. People actually reported giving even more help to strangers, volunteering and donating to charity than they had before the pandemic. Perhaps because that acute fear response we get in times of disaster actually motivates us. --- ### [Human Chain Saves Drowning Family](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e75eb8bb-ba4b-4ada-a1fa-2256e3b12243) 🎧 44:13 - 45:01 (00:47) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/54f44141-08e6-43ac-9000-91a2b8eae262" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Seventy strangers formed a human chain on a Florida beach to rescue a family caught in a rip tide. - This spontaneous cooperation saved multiple lives through coordinated, selfless actions. #### 💬 Quote > Seventy strangers spontaneously formed a human chain out into the water... rescued the family. > — Abigail Marsh Recounting a collective rescue on a Florida beach #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Tell me that story. What did they do, Abby? **Abigail Marsh:** This is an incredible story. A couple of years ago on a Florida beach, a riptide formed and sent two young boys, their parents and their grandmother, way out to sea. And of course, riptides are very dangerous. People drown on them all the time. But what happened this particular day was that 70 strangers spontaneously formed a human chain out into the water that extended almost all the way to the drowning family. And then a woman named Jessica Simmons and her husband swam out to the end of the human chain, rescued the family, and got them all back to safety one by one. --- ### [Rescuing a Baby Blue Jay](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bb2d6fe9-885b-48e0-be1b-4489a3eff31c) 🎧 45:10 - 48:08 (02:58) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f7eaddb2-6890-4e53-96b3-bcde4fc32dfe" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Abigail Marsh rescued a baby blue jay by taking it to a wildlife care center, showing care beyond her species. - This small act exemplifies alloparental care and the innate impulse to help vulnerable beings. #### 💬 Quote > I was immediately willing to over take in loco parentis and provide the care it needed. > — Abigail Marsh Marsh recounting helping a baby bird by caring for it #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Paint me a picture of what happened, Abby. **Abigail Marsh:** So it was a rush hour, a busy morning, and I had just returned from dropping my child off at school on foot. And as I was walking down a very busy boulevard, I encountered a man standing on the side of the street with his hands in front of him, but he was looking around into the trees around him. And it was such strange I had to stop and ask what was going on. And he lowered his hands to reveal a fuzzy little baby blue jay crouched in them. It's little black eyes glittering up at us. Very calm, interestingly. And he said, I saw this little baby bird out in the road and I had to go and get it, but I have to go to work. I don't know what to do. And I said, well, I'll take over. And so he dumped the little bird into my hands and I took over scanning the trees around me looking to see if there were any parents nearby that I could leave the baby with. And there was just nothing. And so I couldn't possibly leave it there. And so I luckily was right next to a local vet and I wandered in with a bird, hoping dimly that maybe they would be able to help with the bird. All they could do was give me a box to put it in. And so I put the little baby bird in a box. I walked home with it, called my local animal rescue center, and they said they would be happy to take the baby bird in. And so I took about an hour out of my morning and dropped the baby bird off at a little wildlife center. **Shankar Vedantam:** Now, this wasn't sort of a dramatic act of altruism. You know, you were not giving up a kidney. You were not sort of putting your own life in danger. But it is actually, when you step back and look at it, it's kind of extraordinary, which is that, you know, the blue jay is not even your species. This is not a creature that belongs to your species. And yet you are willing to take time and effort to protect its well-being. **Abigail Marsh:** Absolutely. And this really was a very good example of alloparental care when I look back on it. I was not this baby bird's parent, but I was immediately willing to take in loco parentis and provide the care it needed to make sure that it was going to survive. And again, it's such a tiny thing in the scheme of things. There's no huge sacrifice on my part. But looking back, that altruistic impulse that I had to help, regardless of the fact that it was going to cost me certainly quite a bit of time and effort, really didn't matter to me at all. I just needed to make sure that this little baby was going to be okay. **Shankar Vedantam:** What was your feeling after you dropped off this bird at this Wildlife Rescue Center, Abby? I **Abigail Marsh:** found that I had grown very attached to it in a short period of time, and I kept track of it. The Wildlife Center very kindly sent me emails about it, that it was being raised with a bunch of other Blue Jay fledglings that had been dropped off. It had learned to fly, it had learned to feed itself, and then they let me know when it was finally ready to be released back into the wild. --- ### [Cory Booker’s Fiery Rescue](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f92b4bca-5d54-4217-882f-7fb778d22d96) 🎧 50:02 - 52:11 (02:09) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/33d4822c-5b3b-4def-b393-e4b2f1b528f1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Cory Booker bravely rescued a neighbor's daughter from a burning house despite smoke and flames. - He acted in terror but did not hesitate, showing true courage is acting despite fear, not absence of it. #### 💬 Quote > I was very honest about how terrified I had been throughout. > — Abigail Marsh Describing Cory Booker’s courageous rescue despite fear #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** Can you set the scene for me and describe what happened? **Abigail Marsh:** Absolutely. It's an incredible story. So Booker was coming home one night with a couple of members of his security detail. And when they got close to his house, they discovered that the home of the neighbor next door was on fire. Smoke was pouring through the windows and Booker's neighbor, whose name was Jacqueline Williams, was outside in the yard screaming that her daughter was still trapped inside the house on the second floor. And what Booker said later is exactly what many, many heroic rescuers say, is that he acted without even thinking. He jumped out of the car, he ran across the yard and started to run into the house with one of his security detail running right behind him. And of course, once he got into the door, he discovered that the air was full of smoke and he could see hardly anything as he's gasping and choking his way up to the kitchen on the second floor. Once they got there, they discovered that there were flames everywhere, going up the walls, across the ceiling. They could hear little explosions. And the security detail, whose name was Rodriguez, was like, I've had enough. You are not going any further. He tried to get Booker to leave the house without rescuing his neighbor's daughter. Booker refused. They wrestled for a little bit. Booker said, you know, you have to let me go in. If I don't go in, she's going to die. And so he, the detective said, okay. And Booker plunged into the house, fought his way through the smoke into the bedroom where his neighbor's daughter was barely conscious, flung her over his shoulder and staggered back through the kitchen, which was engulfed in flames at this point, burning embers are raining down on him. And he finally makes it back out of the house and collapses into the yard, where he was taken by ambulance to the hospital with injuries from smoke inhalation and second-degree burns to his hands. --- ### [Bravery Is Acting Despite Fear](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a969a4ef-b05e-4639-b52a-d827833a02c8) 🎧 55:30 - 56:05 (00:35) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d71f0526-fabf-41f5-a86f-5008f8bcb5c0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Fear is normal and informative, but should not control decisions to help others. - True bravery involves acknowledging fear yet acting in alignment with one’s values despite it. #### 💬 Quote > Emotion is... a very bad boss. We should never assume that our emotions are the true source of truth. > — Abigail Marsh On managing fear to act heroically #### 📚 Transcript **Abigail Marsh:** cannot act if we feel fear? That's exactly right. Emotion is, I think, a good source of information, but it's a very bad boss. We should never assume that our emotions are the true source of truth. And oftentimes our fear is telling us to do things that aren't consistent with our values, right? If you really do want to help somebody, it's normal to feel afraid when you know that there's a risk that you might be injured or that you might experience pain or discomfort. And truly heroic people act in the face of that feeling and despite that feeling. --- ### [Parental Courage in Action](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f185bbd-2a24-40b8-bc18-8f7ae4360c22) 🎧 56:21 - 57:24 (01:02) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fc68b5d6-fd4c-489d-8afc-d0f406e3b051" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Abigail Marsh instinctively saved her daughter from drowning without hesitation, driven by overwhelming love. - Parental love can trigger spontaneous courage, overriding fear to protect a child's life. #### 💬 Quote > I truly acted without thinking... I was going to help her no matter what. > — Abigail Marsh Marsh recounting saving her daughter from drowning #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** I **Abigail Marsh:** think I had just a little taste of what some true heroes and altruists experience. One summer afternoon, when one of my kids was younger and had just learned how to swim and was paddling in a neighbor's pool and got trapped under like a life preserver shaped pool toy and didn't know how to tread water. And so she started to sink underneath the surface of the water. And just before her little face went under, she screamed, mommy, help me, in this voice that like zapped like lightning through my brain. And I truly acted without thinking. I was in the pool, fully clothed, phone in my pocket, before I had thought even just for a second about what I was doing. And I pulled her out from under the life preserver and I got her back on the shore. And there was no thought whatsoever involved. I was going to get in that pool and I was going to help her no matter what. The welfare of my daughter, her life, her safety is so overwhelming that I can imagine the situation could have been much more dangerous for me and I would have acted exactly the same way. --- ### [Manage Fear Through Experience](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e51f0505-c656-46e5-86f4-3ea21e031e92) 🎧 58:20 - 59:15 (00:54) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/0fa7bb81-f182-4eeb-924c-37108bb24402" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Overcome fear by gradually exposing yourself to frightening experiences and managing them successfully. - Building confidence in handling fear improves the ability to act bravely when others need help. #### 💬 Quote > The capacity to work through your fear and frightening situations is a capacity that can be developed. > — Abigail Marsh Advice on how to act bravely in dangerous situations #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** say that one way we might overcome the fear that could hold us back from helping others is to expose ourselves to scary experiences. **Abigail Marsh:** The capacity to work through your fear and frightening situations is a capacity that can be developed. And there's pretty good evidence to suggest that people are more capable of acting bravely in dangerous situations when they've been in enough dangerous situations to be able to manage their fear and to have a good sense that they can handle it, right? There's nothing like learning by experience that I've been in a dangerous situation, I felt scared, but it was okay. I managed and I got through to the other side and I did what I wanted to do. And so the more that we can expose ourselves to challenges and risks that give us the experience of feeling afraid and it being okay in the end, the more likely we are to act the way we want to in dangerous situations, including those when somebody else is in danger. --- ### [Just Start Being Altruistic](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3512fdf9-ab3f-4893-8727-b29dd1cd1722) 🎧 59:54 - 01:00:30 (00:36) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/db2568c3-5781-4106-9622-41655743d37f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - To become more altruistic, simply start acting altruistically, even with small steps. - Positive feelings from helping reinforce the behavior, making altruism easier and more rewarding over time. #### 💬 Quote > Really, you have to just start doing the thing you want to do, and your brain, your mind, your mood will catch up later. > — Abigail Marsh Advice on cultivating altruism through behavior #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** It's **Abigail Marsh:** really as simple as that. Oftentimes, changing your behavior comes before changing your mindset. People often think, well, I need to change the way I feel about a situation before I change the way I act, when often it's the reverse. Really, you have to just start doing the thing you want to do, and your brain, your mind, your mood will catch up later. And so the best way to become more altruistic is to just start. And start small. Start as small as is comfortable. Start as small as is easy. But the best thing about altruism is that it feels really good. For most people, it's intrinsically rewarding to help other people. --- ### [Fast Skiing to Save Child](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2da82c97-984f-468e-b797-3833b3ecbfe3) 🎧 01:02:40 - 01:04:02 (01:21) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/68eb9f8d-ed5c-4d7b-a203-f7056b707941" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Abigail Marsh skied faster than comfortable to reach and help her injured child on a terrain park slope. - In emergencies, helpers focus on others' needs rather than their own fears or risks. #### 💬 Quote > You just think of what the other person needs and about trying to help. > — Abigail Marsh Describing the urgency to help injured child while skiing #### 📚 Transcript **Shankar Vedantam:** And in this case, perhaps you were not as good and confident a skier as you might have been a swimmer. Tell me the story of what happened. **Abigail Marsh:** Yes, this was more recently on a local ski hill. And one of my kids decided that they wanted to ski in the terrain park area of the ski hill. And I am deeply afraid of terrain parks. I am a fine skier, but I definitely do not like going very fast and I do not like doing jumps. But I waited at the top of the terrain park while one of my kids decided to go down the terrain. And lo and behold, they were not well enough equipped for this terrain park and ended up, you know, juddering over a bunch of bumps and then disappearing from sight, flying in the air and disappearing from sight. And I panicked because I knew that they could have fallen in the spot that they were and hurt themselves really badly. And before I knew it, I found myself flying through this terrain park, avoiding as best I could the really big jumps, much faster than I'm normally comfortable skiing to get to my child and make sure that she was okay. Now, she had smashed her face pretty badly at the bottom of the series of jumps she'd been over and blood was pouring down her face. And she wasn't very happy in the moment. Luckily, she was okay. But I do remember thinking afterward, that is the fastest I have skied in a very long time. But I just, you know, as so many people I've talked to over the years have told me, you know, you don't think of yourself in the moment. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts