Why is it men are more likely to commit murders?
Oh, feels like a trap.
Okay, first of all, are they? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Women basically don't murder. I mean, all crime is basically male. Every category of crime, men are wildly overrepresented.
I think one of the reasons it... Yeah. You see all those videos of like body language analysts looking at you, and if you're sat this way, it means you're crazy. Okay. Absolutely nonsense.
Oh, all right. Okay. Oh, we're gonna get to the bottom of some stuff tonight. This... Oh, this is wicked. I didn't know that was nonsense.
Yeah, it's just... it is so poorly evidenced.
What's the most common question people ask you when they hear about your work in the space?
I mostly hate true crime, even though I make true crime.
Do you think people are born evil?
No. I don't think anyone is born evil or good. I think all of us, every single one of us, is capable of the worst things you could possibly imagine.
Hello and welcome to 100 Questions with me, Tom Simons. Now, if you are enjoying this content, if you could please scroll down and press subscribe. If you're on any audio streaming platforms, press follow. It really, really helps out the channel and helps us get loads more guests. Today's guest is a renowned criminal psychologist, best-selling author, and broadcaster known for her fascinating work on false memories, human behavior, and the darker side of the human mind. And today, she's going to be telling me all about it. Welcome to the show, Dr. Julia Shaw. Come on. How you doing?
Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. Now, look, Julia, this show is very simple, okay? We've got one hour to get through 100 questions, okay? And every question counts. Even follow-up questions, everything. And this right here, this is my final question. Yeah. This is what I want to ask you the most. We're going to wait till the end for that. Okay. Are you ready?
Okay. So, we start now with a little quickfire get to know you. So, where are you from?
Cologne. That's it. Where's that?
Germany. Yes. Um, what are you most well known for?
Being an expert on false memory.
Okay. What's the piece of work you've done that you're proudest of?
Oh, I'm proudest of my work on trying to use AI and my expertise on false memory to create better investigative interviewing.
Okay. Okay. Interesting. Um, what thing would you most like to talk about today?
In it. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. If you could nominate anyone else for me to ask 100 questions, who would you nominate?
Good question. Um, Naba Ununas.
An author of nonfiction and former person who trained people to de-radicalize ISIS brides, and she did some really important research and work in the Middle East, and she has since written a fiction book which is excellent.
Yeah, that sounds awesome. Um, sorry, how many questions do you think I'm gonna get through today? 100.
Really? You reckon? Yeah. All right. Okay. All right. I'm ready.
Right. Let's start with, you know, your early life. What first made you interested in psychology?
My dad, actually. So I came from a family where my dad has quite serious mental health issues, and I could see that he was in a different reality than other people at the same time. And so it made me really interested in how we all end up living in our own realities, and how with some people that's really obvious, and for most of us it's less pronounced, but it's nevertheless really important. And so I wanted to understand that.
Okay. Could I ask what issues he had?
Oh, okay. And was that very present in your childhood, like seeing that?
Yeah, it was very destabilizing. Um, but it was also very interesting, and I think for me at least it made me understand how those experiences that we have can shape us also for the better in terms of empathizing with others and understanding, you know, where people can be coming from and how their lives can feel very different and overwhelming in their own minds, even if from the outside other people go, 'What do you mean?'
Oh, wow. Okay. Well, look, Julia, there's so much I want to ask you about today, and I have quite a scattered brain. So what we're going to do to make sure I don't just go all over the place is segment this interview, break it up into five different parts. All right. Stuff that you're an expert on. Um, we're going to be talking about evil and the darker side of humanity, false memories and how unreliable our minds can be, bisexuality and the science and misconceptions around it, AI, and finally, environmental crime and what drives it. Is that cool with you?
Thank you. Because otherwise, I'll just lose the plot. I was trying to... I was speaking to Brian Cox all about aliens and that, and I just kept like losing where I was at. It's just a lot, is it? Just when you get into these things, it's all big.
Yeah. Um, let's talk about evil. Okay. You've covered some of the darker sides of humanity like crime and murder. What made you interested in these areas?
Most importantly, I think compared to other psychology in particular, focusing on crime is focusing not only on people who are perhaps struggling themselves, but also who are dragging other people into it. And so I think for me that's always been the most interesting: is to see how are people affecting the people around them, and how do we mitigate any damage that they're causing.
Yeah. And what's the most common question people ask you when they hear about your work in the space?
I mostly hate true crime, even though I make true crime. Um, and the reason for that is, uh, I mean, for years I sort of was lecturing on people... students would come into my lectures and they'd say, you know, 'I want to be a profiler' or 'I want to be this' or 'I want to...' and it was all these jobs that just didn't exist that they'd seen on television. And they were like, 'Well, this is obviously much...' Like, the amount of times that I get asked every single time I present a true crime show, the director is like, 'Well, can you comment on the body language in this footage?' And every time I go, I mean, I can talk about what's happening, but it's scientifically insane or ludicrous to be talking about this as if I can read their body language, and that is in any way meaningful, because the science does not support that.
Really? Yeah, 'cause you see all those videos of like body language analysts looking at you, and if you're sat this way, it means you're crazy. Okay. Nonsense.
Oh, all right. Okay. Oh, we're going to get to the bottom of some stuff tonight. This... Oh, this is wicked. I didn't know that was nonsense.
Yeah, it's just... it is so poorly evidenced. I once did a lie detector video, and then someone analyzed my body language being like, 'Ah, he's lying, and now he was lying.' Yeah.
Or at least wasn't particularly basing it on any evidence. I mean, lie detectors in general, they're only measuring your stress, right? They can't actually tell whether you're lying.
Really?
I mean, there's lots of literature on lie detectors. We can get into that if you want, but let's...
No, no, no. Okay, this is what I mean. Do you know what I mean? I'll lose my thread. Okay, Julia, big question for you. Do you think people are born evil?
All right. Can you expand? I told you we'd get through 100 questions.
Um, I don't think anyone is born evil or good. I think that that is an artificial differentiation anyway. And usually we think other people can be evil, but we can't ourselves. And there's this idea that we're inherently good, other people are bad. And not every... not all other people, but the people we assign, like criminals, like people who are serial killers, we have this sort of category where we go, 'They are bad and I am good. And we are fundamentally different.' But I think all of... all of us, every single one of us, is capable of the worst things you can possibly imagine if you find yourself in the same circumstances as that person. So if your life changes for the worse, if there's war, if there's radicalization that happens to you or that you allow to happen to you. And so I think assuming that every single person is capable of, in inverted commas, evil, I think is important because it also allows us to test drive the things that might take us down a dark path. And the problem if you start saying things like 'that person's just born evil' is that you completely divorce yourself from it, and you maybe catch yourself off guard when you start doing harmful things.
Could I ask you before we go any further to define the difference between a good person and a bad person? You try. What an impossible question. Okay, fair enough. Yeah.
Well, that's... but that's the point, right? Is that it's entirely subjective.
And so, for example, I'm... by being queer in a lot of places, engaging in behavior that's related to that is illegal, but also is seen as sinful or evil by a lot of people. And so, I think, you know, I would be seen as evil in that context, but in other contexts I'm not. So, I think it's just very subjective.
It's so subjective. And we usually rally around things like, well, this person has killed someone, that one's... that person's definitely evil or terrible. But even there, we don't actually necessarily agree. So when someone is killed in prison, for example, who has hurt other people, sometimes the public's reaction is rejoicing, which we should also interrogate. But that still means that again, even murder is not off the table in terms of having a subjective opinion of whether it's good or evil. So, talking about people not being born evil, I think you've touched about this in your book, but um, the thought experiment of if you could go back in time, would you kill baby Hitler? Would you not do that because he's not evil at that point?
I would not kill baby Hitler. Would you kill baby Hitler?
But he's not Hitler yet. He's a baby.
Assuming you could go in to any point to interact with him, though. Is that the period you would choose, just right from the beginning?
When would I kill Hitler? Um... I mean, you asked me, you started this question today.
Um... yeah, probably around then, or I don't know, 'cause you don't... like, it doesn't have to be a big thing.
So you don't have to kill him. You can just interact with him.
But much later he's a baby. So I think... I mean, I wouldn't... would not feel good about it. I wouldn't love it. I don't want to kill a baby, but like, it's Hitler.
Like, lob him in a river. Not... sorry. Okay. Sorry. Also, it stresses me out thinking about all this big stuff.
Doesn't it stress you out all the time? I think it's the most important stuff we should be thinking about, and I think about it all the time.
Yeah, you're right. But do you not love existential things?
Most important questions facing humanity.
No. It freaks me out, man.
All right. I'm... no, I'm leaning in. Okay. Um, if people aren't born evil, what can lead someone to be capable of committing murder?
So, often it's a combination of factors, but one of them is that you think that your actions are justified. And so, that can be beliefs, that can be radical thoughts if you look at society more generally, or just radical versions. And so, you can see extreme sexism, for example, is often the thing that comes before, for example, intimate partner violence, and intimate partner violence can lead to intimate partner homicide. And the beliefs that underlie that are that, you know, gender-based differences exist, and also that a woman needs to be put in her place, or that you are owed certain things as a man. And it is disproportionately men, obviously not exclusively, who are perpetrating intimate partner homicide in particular. And so you can see that those thoughts are underlying it. And this is where we go back to the sort of good and evil idea, where if you genuinely believe, even if it's wrong, even if the people around you are saying that that doesn't make any sense, if you genuinely believe that this thing has to happen, you can convince yourself that this bad thing you're doing is necessary and actually good long term. And so we see that a lot. So whether that's in domestic violence situations, or sometimes in murder where 'I need to teach this person a lesson,' and especially in organized crime situations, there's that sort of retaliation of 'if I don't attack this person, they're going to come for me later, or they're going to come for people like me later.' Um, we also see it in corporate crime environments where you have this almost... this belief that everyone else is doing it, and so I don't really want to, but I basically have to.
Yeah. And there's that in German, there's this word which is... which means that you're talking it beautiful. In other words, you're talking yourself into it and making it sound like a good idea.
Does it not like... um, sorry, and I am aware, you know, a lot of my questions today are going to come off a bit like self-indulgent just because I know so little about this, but I just like... like, then do you not get stressed that you're doing something evil or something bad, but you've just gone, 'That's okay'? Do you know what I mean?
I mean, we should all be thinking this and asking this about what are the ways in which my ideology or beliefs could have been radicalized, and making sure that we have a support system around us of people who have ideally views that are, well, either more mainstream that can be good, or at least are slightly different from our own, so we're not just in a sycophantic environment. And so much like with AI, if you're using a large language model and it's telling you the whole time that your ideas are great, you know, 'That's a... that's a great suggestion, and yes, that's absolutely true.' In real life, it's the same: that if you're surrounded by people like that, you're going to not notice when your beliefs start to drift into these really harmful thoughts that premeditate or that precipitate really harmful behavior.
So, you need to pick your friends, basically.
Yeah. Need to call you in.
Why are people so into true crime?
I think partly because we're interested in peering into our own darkness and exploring what we could be capable of, and partly because we've always been interested in scary stories.
Not me. I don't like looking into our own darkness. I'm perfectly happy with the light. I like Pixar movies, man. I actually don't like horror films or true crime. It freaks me out so bad. Sorry. Just scary though, isn't it?
