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Discussion thread: Critical Ponerology (WHAT IS EVIL?) is ready to listen to! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-10-23 02:13:37
Imported:
2026-06

Content

This episode is published and ready to hear wherever you get podcasts!

Okay. So. Evil.

What is it? Does it exist? Says who? How evil do you have to be to BE evil? What can we do about it? In this Spooktober episode with Dr. Kenneth MacKendrick, we dive into it.

Have you listened? What did you think?

Rubbing my palms together over a lowered gaze,

Count Podula Ward

Files

Critical Ponerology (WHAT IS "EVIL"?) with Dr. Kenneth MacKendrick - alie ward

What is evil? Who is evil? Does evil exist? Who decides? Can we scream over turkey at grandma's house? Let's chat Critical Ponerology with scholar, professor, author of Evil: A Critical Primer, and a gem of a person, Dr. Kenneth MacKendrick of the University of Manitoba. He's been teaching courses

Comments

Ted Vician

This was an interesting episode and discussion. I was a bit surprised that the idea of supernatural evil external to humans (I.e., Satan or Chernobog) was so quickly dismissed as part of the discussion. That’s one of the fundamental debates about the nature of evil.

Brain 🧠 Shenanigans

This needed to be a three part episode, minimum. What a treasure trove of information!

Clancy Thomas

Can’t wait to check this one out.

Tess Flinner

AHHHH I love. Alie can you please do one on dictatorships? im scared. love you bye

g0ose0nTheLo0se

So so good but where’s the Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated shout out!! 🥸

g0ose0nTheLo0se

For the sake of discussion, what’s your take on it!

Elinor Wahl

Since dolphins came up in the questions, this is a good opportunity to put the dolphin rape myth to rest. Almost two decades ago, when the idea was first filtering through the internet, I took the trouble to hunt down the paper that people were basing the idea on, and what was it about? Tooth-raking behaviors in bottlenose dolphins. Meaning, instances in which they got angry enough to bite each other. Sexual aggression was documented, but nowhere in the paper was overt sexual assault mentioned. This, combined with footage of dolphins having erections during fights, turned into a long-running internet hysteria

Elinor Wahl

I can't agree with the idea that nonhumans have no conception of good or evil. Research throughout the animal world shows that reward for prosocial behavior, and punishment for actions detrimental to others, is pretty much universal, down to the behavior of unicellular organisms. This isn't restricted within species, but spread across interspecies interactions. Just one example is the cleaner wrasse, which other fish will reward with repeat visits if they behave, and punish if the wrasse takes more than the other fish wants. Even before punishment, if a wrasse sneakily bites off a scale, the larger fish will warn them with a vigorous shake of their body. If the warnings are disregarded, the wrasse loses the fish's patronage. The word 'evil' is a matter of semantics; our morality is directly adapted from the interactions of other species that we grew from and share space with

Christian Swenson

I really enjoyed this one and shared it with a bunch of people. Lots of food for thought within daily life. Especially, our relationship to dirty or clean. In his book, “Trickster creates this world”, Lewis Hyde has a chapter about dirt where he uses the term “matter out of place” or MOOP. I spent so much of my time around the house “mooping”! and then I get out to the garden and I see living matter/weeds that must be killed and thrown away. It’s such a primary act of culture, deciding who lives and who dies… thanks for adding to my divine confusion.

Krissyswork

Another fantastic episode! It really challenged me at first, the way Kenneth kept avoiding directly calling harmful things evil. But I kept listening and I’m glad I did because it closed this never ending loop I have going in my mind - the way the exact same language can be used to promote different ideas has been driving me crazy lately. Because language is so powerful, this application of the world evil helped me understand how we use language to manipulate reality. I feel better prepared to talk about and think in political spaces - and more prepared to aid in the fight against globally rising facism

Ted Vician

Humans seem capable of plenty of evil on our own. That doesn’t mean there isn’t (or perhaps wasn’t, some time in the past) an initial source for that. I won’t discount the possibility of external supernatural evil, any more than I’d discount the possibility of life on other planets. The fact that it hasn’t been detected doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Krissyswork

I think in the context of this episode and Kenneth’s research, removing the term evil and replacing it with something directly related to the harmful thing you’re discussing would be beneficial in understand the linguistic importance of the word “evil”

Alie Ward

Oh that's a great way to put it! IT's a lot to wrap our brains around, conceptually, and so fascinating HOW DEEP the language goes in doing harm to others

Alie Ward

Ha! Exactly -- I think it's so interesting how Dr. Lydia Jennings explained that VERY same difference between soil and dirt, right?

Alie Ward

Oh my word, our amazing editor Jake suggested a clip, but I have a weird misophonia-type reaction to cartoon voices and I nixed it. blame me!

Alie Ward

Have you heard the recent Revolutionology episode on rebellions? Just came out a few weeks ago!

Alie Ward

So glad you enjoyed it! Let me know if you grab his book: "Evil: A Critical Primer"

Christian Swenson

Oh, yes. She said it so quickly though I had to listen to your conversation more closely to get that. Simple, but launches into semantics. As much of it often did... Celtic knots of conversation going up, down and sideways. Good stuff!

Melissa Berger

I had a hard time with this episode. Being formerly religious, I had thought about good and evil a lot, and didn’t realize how tied I was to my personal conclusion that evil is tied to malice, corruption (either intrinsic or a corrupting force doing evil through someone or something), and willful ignorance. I have always questioned whether someone or something could even BE evil, especially when the context of religion and the dichotomy of a good being/place and evil being/place is removed. It def gave me some things to think about, being frustrated isn’t always a bad thing. I did wish I had asked why fictional villains (supposedly “evil”) are often loved and perceived to be more funny, and when/how that started happening, but not sure that would have been super relevant to the actual discussion anyway.

MeganTheLibrarian765

This would be a great crossover or starter for Criminal Psychology. Dahmer, Bundy, BTK, we can all agree they’re horrid people.

Priyal

This was a really interesting episode. One part that I struggled with was the idea of having to "turn down the temperature" on political discussions to move the needle. Look, I get that these discussions have to happen to stop people from drifting towards fascism who might be salvageable, but as a woman of colour I'm so tired. I'm tired of having to be polite and reasonable and it feels like no matter what we say, people don't care anyway. 😩

Bonnie Flint

What an interesting episode! I wish he would have talked about the different ways that different groups define evil. I think his definition of dirtiness matches more with the conservative psyche, which psychological research has shown to be concerned with purity. Before he began talking I asked myself how I defined evil, and I came up with: purposefully doing harm, usually for the pleasure of the harm itself, despite being taught that harming is bad and being capable of avoiding do that harm. For me personally, evil has never had anything to do with dirt, MOOP, social acceptability, etc, the primary things he talked about. It has specifically to do with harming for the joy of harming, despite knowing thats a bad thing to do. So someone who has been taught from childhood that doing harm is good isn't evil, but if the person who taught them that knew better, then that teacher is evil. This definition of evil is far more useful to me, and I use it fairly rarely because I tend to assume people don't intend the harm they cause, or do it for some reason other than the harm itself.

Marc Rubin

Alie delivered a masterclass on sounding interested in a pedantic ologist who refused to play along. Eg, what person, let alone an expert on evil, doesn't have a favorite villian?!? I'm pretty sure the students who left during his potato chip stunt weren't disgusted with "evil dirt", but realized their tuition dollars may be better spent elsewhere. This episode was a bit of a let down. I was hoping to learn something about the nature of evil, eg are ALL humans capable of evil? What are some similarities of people that are considered evil? Also, please do an episode about veterinary gerontology with my lovely wife, Dr Ashley Portmann of Home Together Vet! https://www.instagram.com/p/DPwxHtqjbpa/?igsh=a2MwcTFjamUybjdj

Holden A. Goose

I personally hated this episode. I felt that the guest was pedantic and close minded. I was really hoping for dialogue on modern, larger scale concepts rather than splitting hairs on meanings and being overly vague when asked for opinions. I really hope there can be a different episode on this topic because this person clearly isn’t the authority to speak on the concept of evil.

Holden A. Goose

Thank you!!! Totally agree on everything

John Buchner

I think I agree with you: he had a definition of evil and then refused to use it over and over again. A discussion something along the lines of let’s take that example, and see how it fits my definition of evil would’ve have been more interesting. At least then you’ve got 4 groups: things some people think are evil and fit the definition, things most people think aren’t evil but do fit the definition, things that don’t fit the definition that people think are evil, and things that don’t fit the definition and people don’t think they are evil. Using the guests own definition of evil, people that self describe as fixated on cleanliness, but do outrageous, human rights violations to others, are evil, even if they see themselves as clean.

Shayna Sessler

I really struggled with this episode too. I wanted the ologist to at least consider and discuss other (what he might term “colloquial” or non-academic) common definitions of evil. If I understand his definition correctly, then in the example of a racist murder, the only thing evil in the situation would be the victim, in the view of the murderer who saw them as impure or less worthy of life because of their race?

Andrew McVay

Wow! I wasn’t expecting to see such big and opposite opinions on this. Some of the interview’s replies were repetitive. It would have helped to move the conversation along with a different reply re: a definition for evil. But also I appreciate the opportunity to return to a consistent retort. Because perspective completely informs morals! I’m reminded of at least 4 books digging into the periphery of this good/evil topic. Against Empathy by Paul Bloom The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon Awkward by Tye Tashiro

Mads

I found the definition of evil as anything we avoid really difficult to grasp. Evil is such a strong word, to reduce it to what seems like mere dislike doesn't really address the issue

Alie Ward

Cool suggestions! And yes, it's so hard to condense an entire semester class into 70 minutes!

Andrew McVay

I keep coming back because you and your guests pull it off so well! Keep up the good work 👍

Emma Porter

My husband and I literally had this same conversation listening to this! He was close minded about his own definition of evil, why not consider different research and historical conceptions of evil? It was a very circular conversation