How Napoleon and Churchill Used Neuroscience to Make a Better Soldier and More Loyal Public

How Napoleon and Churchill Used Neuroscience to Make a Better Soldier and More Loyal Public

The brain acts in strange ways during wartime. Even in active combat situations, when soldiers are one mistake away from death, many can’t fire on their enemies because their brain is triggering compassion centers against other soldiers. Studies of World War II show that while soldiers were willing to risk death, only 15% to 20% fired their weapons in intense combat, indicating a reluctance to kill. That’s why successful military leaders were able to motivate their soldiers with ideas of unfairness and justice, that their enemies weren’t human to make them better at fighting and killing.

All this goes to show that if you want to understand war, you have to understand how the brain makes sense of it. Does war make all of us retreat to our lizard brain and act on pure instinct – so the only way to win is pumping out manipulative propaganda to the masses and use modern technologies like AI and social media exploit the brain's cognitive vulnerabilities? Well, many nations like Russia and China are already using these to their advantage.

Or can we bring higher thinking to the matter? Is a researcher like Robert Sapolsky right when he argues that we can stop wars by persuading enough people that it is bad and pointless.

Today’s guest is Nicholas Wright, author of “Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain.” He’s a neuroscientist and advisor to the Pentagon. We explore how our brains respond under pressure and how these instincts can shape everything from battlefield outcomes to boardroom decisions. He argues that while conflict is inevitable, it’s not unmanageable - if we understand how the brain drives fear, trust, aggression, and judgment.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jaksot(1077)

From Bronze to Blood: How the Sword Became Humanity's First Murder Weapon

From Bronze to Blood: How the Sword Became Humanity's First Murder Weapon

For nearly two thousand years, swords reigned as humanity's weapon of choice—the first tools designed exclusively to kill other humans rather than hunt animals. When archaeologist Paul Gething redisco...

19 Maalis 47min

Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right

Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right

Science progresses through breakthrough discoveries, but behind many of the field's greatest advancements lies a darker history of scientific dysfunction—hostile competition, information hoarding, and...

17 Maalis 47min

How Two California Wines Shattered Centuries of French Supremacy in a Blind Taste Test

How Two California Wines Shattered Centuries of French Supremacy in a Blind Taste Test

In 1976, nine French wine judges did the unthinkable: they blindly selected two California wines over France's most elite vintages in what became known as the Judgment of Paris. This shocking upset se...

12 Maalis 36min

How an Italian Engineer with 700 Knights Defeated 100,000 Ottoman Troops at the Siege Rhodes

How an Italian Engineer with 700 Knights Defeated 100,000 Ottoman Troops at the Siege Rhodes

Throughout the 16th century, one man stood between the Ottoman Empire and European domination, yet his name has been largely forgotten. Gabriele Tadino was an Italian military engineer whose genius tr...

10 Maalis 43min

Why America's Military Never Became a Threat to Democracy

Why America's Military Never Became a Threat to Democracy

America's Founding Fathers feared a standing army would inevitably threaten civilian governance. Yet 250 years later, the U.S. military remains a strange outlier among nearly every nation that has eve...

5 Maalis 51min

How Christianity Shaped America's 500-Year Mission to Become a Holy Land

How Christianity Shaped America's 500-Year Mission to Become a Holy Land

Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists famously described the First Amendment as building a "wall of separation between church and State." This line has been the gold standard for thos...

3 Maalis 52min

Every Communication Breakthrough—From Cave Art to AI Video—Exists to Tell Stories

Every Communication Breakthrough—From Cave Art to AI Video—Exists to Tell Stories

There’s an argument to be made that every technology advance in communication – from cave paintings to fake AI movie trailers – is at its root an attempt to tell stories. Our first night-fires created...

26 Helmi 58min

The East’s Auschwitz: How Imperial Japan’s Secret Experimenters Escaped Justice

The East’s Auschwitz: How Imperial Japan’s Secret Experimenters Escaped Justice

During the Holocaust, Josef Mengele discarded every medical ethic to perform horrific human experiments at Auschwitz, including non-consensual vivisections, limb transplants, and agonizing surgeries c...

24 Helmi 44min

Suosittua kategoriassa Yhteiskunta

olipa-kerran-otsikko
sita
kaksi-aitia
ihme-ja-kumma
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
i-dont-like-mondays
uutiscast
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
poks
antin-palautepalvelu
kolme-kaannekohtaa
mamma-mia
rss-murhan-anatomia
yopuolen-tarinoita-2
aikalisa
rss-nikotellen
loukussa
meidan-pitais-puhua
rss-palmujen-varjoissa
naakkavalta