Zimbardo: So what I'm trying to promote is not only the importance of each individual thinking "I'm a hero" and waiting for the right situation to come along in which I will act on behalf of some people or some principle, but also, "I'm going to learn the skills to influence other people to join me in that heroic action." Watch the movie about the Stanford prison experiment for background. See excerpts at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KXy8CLqgk4&feature=related A fascinating backbeat is the re-direction of future studies after this experiment to people who became more proactive by combating their own shyness.

Zimbardo argues that every human being has the capacity to commit good and evil. Rwanda, Nazi Germany, and the Khmer Rouge are all examples where ordinary human beings, bearing the weight of powerful social dynamics, metastasize into monsters for the sake of self-assurance and self-preservation. Zimbardo helps us imagine a world so lawless, extreme, dire, and challenges us to embrace, however uncomfortably, a basic set of moral values, a social contract to allow us to coexist peacefully. Some, however, might consider such reactionary morality just another form of prison.

Intersting defense take ("diminished capacity and have lost their free will"), but overall a somewhat weak interview.