The podcast explores the idea of narcissism/egocentrism in us as human beings that we aren’t exactly aware of. It exposes the horrible truth that as humans we are so deep within ourselves and our own anxieties, we often overlook the same hardships and difficulties that our peers might share.  I use the term narcissism lightly because even though we are so focused with ourselves, we also downplay our actions and influence just as much. We do this for multiple reasons, but the most prominent is to further our own agendas whether it be good or bad.Towards the end of the podcast, Vanessa says that when she was taking public transportation as a pregnant women, she would pout or try to look sad in the hopes of being offered a seat. She reveals that just by doing this, she would rarely get offered a seat and that she had to ask and through asking she would then get the seat. Through that she says “people are really good at justifying their behaviors in ways that make them feel good about themselves” revealing that we don’t do things out of the kindness our hearts but to just feed our egos. So just as much as it is always about the other person, it’s always more about ourselves.

The podcast explores this really complex concept that the influence of society causes us to do both good and bad. We aren’t good or bad simply because of us as individuals but more so as a community or society. We are the way we are because the society we live in has set us up to be that way. We don’t do good things because we are inherently good people, we do those things because we are uncomfortable with saying no so we just comply (and that goes with both the good and bad things as explored in the experiments discussed in the podcast). That feeling creates a lot of pressure and that pressure can influence to do a lot of things.

We always have been taught to always say yes so that we’ll say yes even if it makes it us uncomfortable. Because as uncomfortable as it is to say yes under pressure for us, it’s way more uncomfortable to say no and then be looked at a certain way. We have been for centuries been conditioned to conform and comply more than to do the right thing. Prime example is capitalism, most know that the root of capitalism in society is inherently wrong, however, we are conditioned to comply. We downplay our affect because we refuse to do the “right” thing, because the right thing is much more uncomfortable than the wrong. So it’s no surprise that in the teacher-student experiment, that although the “teacher” had hesitated and knew what he was doing was wrong, he still continued because he was told that this is what we had to. He had downplayed his role in the situation because he didn’t want accept that he had control, he just chose to be complacentHe ignored the need of that student in order to carry out the experiment because “he was told to do so”. Which goes back to the very beginning where they say that we don’t think about how we affect the world but about how the world affects us.