Lionel Nation - The Obedience Chamber: The Horrifying History and Brutal Truth of the Milgram Experiment
Aired: 2025-03-28
Duration: 13:43


=== Milgram's Obedience Experiment (13:42) ===

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[00:01:31]  If there's one study, one PSYOP, one experiment that you have to know to really be a sentient, connected person in the conspiratorium, In the world of psychotronics, to really understand human behavior, it's the Milgram experiment.
[00:01:54]  I remember seeing this when I was a kid, and it blew me away.
[00:01:59]  It is at the very soul, the center, the epicenter of human horror, of wars, of death camps, and how seemingly rational people Can end up doing something.
[00:02:18]  And you wonder, how?
[00:02:19]  How did they do it?
[00:02:21]  So this is a story of what was called the Obedience Chamber.
[00:02:25]  Isn't that a great term?
[00:02:26]  It's a frightening tale of the Milgram Experiment.
[00:02:32]  You may have seen this before.
[00:02:34]  I'm sure you have.
[00:02:35]  But let me describe it to you.
[00:02:37]  There was something very, very unsettling, very scary about the Yale campus in 1961.
[00:02:43]  More so than usual.
[00:02:46]  Because beneath its ivy-covered walls and this stayed kind of, you know, New Haven.
[00:02:54]  Great pizza, by the way.
[00:02:56]  But in this sterile, windowless laboratory in Linsley Chittenden Hall.
[00:03:05]  This is not a wonderful name.
[00:03:06]  Sounds very Harry Potter-ish.
[00:03:08]  A quiet terror unfolded.
[00:03:14]  One not of ghost stories, but of human behavior laid bare.
[00:03:21]  It's fascinating.
[00:03:24]  It was there that Stanley Milgram, a 27-year-old psychologist with a curious interest, a glint, and a creeping unease about what people were capable of doing if they were ordered to do so.
[00:03:43]  He conducted one of the most important but disturbing psychological experiments in all of modern history.
[00:03:52]  This is it.
[00:03:55]  The world had just watched Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi architect of death trains and incomprehensible horrors.
[00:04:07]  We just saw him stand trial in Jerusalem.
[00:04:10]  And his defense, remember this?
[00:04:13]  I was just following orders.
[00:04:15]  And that became almost not a joke, but a part of our quiver.
[00:04:23]  We mocked it.
[00:04:24]  What do you mean you're just paying?
[00:04:27]  That phrase, so cold, so mechanical, so devoid of any humanity.
[00:04:35]  Because was he a psychopath?
[00:04:37]  No!
[00:04:38]  He had family?
[00:04:39]  Did he look like a monster?
[00:04:41]  Remember the banality of evil?
[00:04:43]  But what echoed in Milgram's mind, like a drumbeat from hell, was this idea, this idea, this thing.
[00:04:49]  I was just following orders.
[00:04:51]  Was obedience to authority, and this is the issue, was that enough to turn an ordinary man into a killer?
[00:04:57]  Could it happen here in America?
[00:04:59]  Is it a rarity, or is it...
[00:05:02]  Part of our existence.
[00:05:03]  So Milgram designed what he called a learning experiment.
[00:05:08]  Air quotes.
[00:05:10]  But what took place was more than some ritual of psychological horror.
[00:05:15]  It was beyond that.
[00:05:16]  Volunteers were recruited under the guise of helping science, more of this, understand memory and punishment.
[00:05:24]  I think they were given like a couple of bucks in a box lunch, you know.
[00:05:27]  So they were led into a sterile chamber where a man in a lab coat A man of authority.
[00:05:33]  Calmly instructed them to administer a series of electric shocks to another participant.
[00:05:40]  Not a human being, just a participant.
[00:05:43]  A lab rat in another room.
[00:05:46]  An actor, though they didn't know that.
[00:05:49]  So the shocks weren't real, but the screams, though pre-recorded, felt real enough.
[00:05:57]  As the voltage increased, For these increasingly wrong answers.
[00:06:03]  The supposed learner begged for mercy, cried and paid, pounded the walls, and eventually went silent.
[00:06:13]  Could it be what?
[00:06:13]  A coma?
[00:06:14]  Could it be?
[00:06:14]  Who knows?
[00:06:15]  The majority of the participants, 65% continued.
[00:06:21]  They continued delivering what they believed were fatal shocks simply because a man in a lab coat Told them to do it.
[00:06:31]  Why?
[00:06:32]  Was it because of...
[00:06:34]  He was of authority?
[00:06:38]  I'm abnegating, absenting myself, disconnecting myself of guilt?
[00:06:43]  I don't know.
[00:06:46]  I don't know.
[00:06:47]  The results sent chills down the spine of psychology and society alike and the implications were more terrifying than anyone expected.
[00:07:00]  Ordinary, good-hearted people, people just off the street, people with families that looked like just whatever.
[00:07:06]  They were capable of inflicting agony and maybe death, not out of hatred, not out of spite, not out of anger, but out of obedience, following orders.
[00:07:17]  And worse still, they often showed no guilt, no hesitation, no trepidation, no nothing.
[00:07:24]  Just the sterile compliance of bureaucratic...
[00:07:29]  Evil.
[00:07:32]  Breathtaking.
[00:07:33]  Milgram tried to soften the blow.
[00:07:36]  He spoke of agentic states, of diffusion of responsibility.
[00:07:44]  But the truth was even darker.
[00:07:47]  The experiments revealed that the Nazi lurking in the neighbor, the sadist buried beneath the...
[00:07:56]  Office clerk's tie or whatever.
[00:07:58]  That's who these people were.
[00:08:00]  The capacity for cruelty wasn't just, you know, some product of ideology.
[00:08:05]  It was embedded, hardwired, in the operating system of the human condition.
[00:08:11]  All it took was the right uniform and a gentle nudge, and you are off and running.
[00:08:18]  The lab became known to insiders as the obedience chamber.
[00:08:24]  And students kind of whispered about it.
[00:08:27]  Some said the screams echoed through the walls long after the experiment ended.
[00:08:34]  There were rumors that swirled, that a participant had a nervous breakdown, that one refused to even enter a university building again.
[00:08:44]  Milgram himself, rather shaken, seemed at times more kind of mad scientist than man.
[00:08:52]  He was haunted.
[00:08:53]  By what he had uncovered.
[00:08:55]  It's fascinating.
[00:08:57]  And he published his findings and the scientific community was appalled and fascinated.
[00:09:03]  Kind of a concomitant disgust but lurid interest.
[00:09:09]  Ethicists howled.
[00:09:11]  Nobody was hurt.
[00:09:14]  What do you mean ethics?
[00:09:15]  Nobody was hurt.
[00:09:16]  No animals were harmed in this.
[00:09:20]  The government paid attention.
[00:09:21]  Militaries around the world quietly took notes.
[00:09:24]  People paid attention to this.
[00:09:27]  In the decades since, Milgram and the Milgram experiment have never faded.
[00:09:34]  Its fingerprints are everywhere on the cold hands of corporate scandals in drone strike orders given by people, by kids even, in a Quonset hut looking at a video game.
[00:09:47]  No problem.
[00:09:48]  Push the button.
[00:09:49]  I'm not there.
[00:09:50]  And by the way, the more and more detached, this is different.
[00:09:54]  This is your following orders.
[00:09:55]  But add to the complexity of this the fact that you're detached from the horror.
[00:09:59]  This is incredible.
[00:10:03]  In the I was just doing my job kind of chorus, just following orders, that echoed through every abuse of power, it's still here.
[00:10:11]  And we've renamed it Obedience to Authority Bias.
[00:10:16]  Doesn't that sound good?
[00:10:17]  It's called Obedience to authority by us.
[00:10:22]  You know, we kind of softened it a little bit with academic language, euphemistic.
[00:10:27]  But at night, in the shadows of our minds and our souls, it lingers.
[00:10:34]  It's still there.
[00:10:36]  I'm still fascinated by it.
[00:10:38]  I remember I was a kid when I saw it.
[00:10:40]  And even I understood.
[00:10:41]  Wow!
[00:10:42]  And the most disturbing truth wasn't that the experiment succeeded.
[00:10:46]  It's that it worked too well.
[00:10:49]  No matter the year, the country, the cause, people complied and comply, and they still do.
[00:10:56]  That's what it's about.
[00:10:57]  So ask yourself this.
[00:10:59]  If a stranger in a lab coat told you to push a button, that might kill someone you've never met.
[00:11:06]  Would you do it?
[00:11:08]  Now you, of course, are going to say, no, of course not.
[00:11:11]  Really?
[00:11:11]  Most people say no.
[00:11:13]  But Milgram proved otherwise.
[00:11:16]  And that's what's the most fascinating about this.
[00:11:19]  And somewhere, somewhere in some, you know, dusty archive or file, the recording still exists.
[00:11:25]  The screams, the silence, the voice calmly saying, the experiment requires that you continue.
[00:11:30]  And just to open the door, Hal, just open the door.
[00:11:35]  I'm sorry, continue.
[00:11:36]  The experiment requires that you continue.
[00:11:38]  That's it.
[00:11:38]  Cold.
[00:11:39]  You can almost hear it now.
[00:11:41]  If you've seen it, it's incredible.
[00:11:42]  You have to see the whole thing.
[00:11:44]  And that perhaps is the scariest sound of all.
[00:11:48]  The silence.
[00:11:50]  The silence and the obeisance and the going along with it.
[00:11:58]  Every single day, whether it's on X or whatever it is, you see the most horrific of just carnage and death.
[00:12:09]  It's incomprehensible of children.
[00:12:12]  And people do it.
[00:12:13]  And they will, instead of necessarily having a guy in a white coat, they will be told by their politicians, oh no, no, no, they asked for it.
[00:12:26]  Oh no, no, no, we're not.
[00:12:28]  Don't feel bad about this.
[00:12:29]  Oh no, no, no, no.
[00:12:31]  We're doing the right thing.
[00:12:34]  They asked for it.
[00:12:34]  They could have stopped, or whatever the particular thing is.
[00:12:38]  It's their fault.
[00:12:40]  During World War II, dropping two, count them, two atom bombs.
[00:12:44]  Just the most horrible.
[00:12:46]  They said, well, you know, listen, better to do that than have Americans killed if there was an invasion.
[00:12:52]  When Doolittle, there were more, the fire bombs.
[00:12:55]  You know, Japan during World War II was all wood, wooden homes, wooden this.
[00:12:59]  It just, I mean, it's just horrible.
[00:13:03]  And then the others, the Bataan Death March and others, we All share this collective psychopathy.
[00:13:11]  Coming up, I'm going to also compare this to the Stanford Prison Experiment, too, and how that was a sort of a follow-up.
[00:13:20]  But think about this.
[00:13:21]  The obedience chamber.
[00:13:23]  And while you're thinking about it, do me a favor.
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