EconTalk · Russ Roberts

How We Tamed Ourselves and Invented Good and Evil (with Hanno Sauer)

March 9, 2026·1 hr 14 min·5 clips

Hanno Sauer reveals how humans became docile by systematically killing the most violent members of their tribes for thousands of years.

Roberts begins with scale. Sauer's book comes in as a wide history of morality, and Roberts anchors the interview in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. The conversation moves to the problem of seeming good. Sauer describes the odd trap where trying too hard to look moral can make someone seem calculating, while actually caring sends a stronger signal. Authenticity matters, but he does not flatten affection into fake social display. Friends are genuinely loved. Kids, tribes, nations, and even the tennis club can draw real concern, not just dressed-up self-interest. Still, Sauer keeps the machinery in view. His account holds two things together: the inside feeling, and the evolutionary pressures that made those feelings useful in social life. Roberts keeps testing the idea with examples. He pushes on whether moral conduct is performance, deep feeling, or a messy mix that refuses to split cleanly. The veneer theory takes a hit. Sauer brings up the line about scratching an altruist and watching a hypocrite bleed, then calls it memorable but wrong. Cooperation runs deeper than that. Selfish-gene logic may help explain why altruism evolved, but that does not make altruism thin manipulation. The exchange stays loose and probing. Roberts moves from theory to lived cases, including Herb Kelleher working at Southwest Airlines on Christmas and Thanksgiving. The ending stays nicely unsettled. Sauer says his answer may reflect the values of a 42-year-old man, while 25-year-olds shaped by toxic Internet content might see it differently.

As heard by us

A clear, reflective conversation on how social instincts can become sincerely held moral commitments.

Hanno Sauer's conversation with Russ Roberts follows morality from Adam Smith's concern for others into the evolutionary pressures that make cooperation and virtue possible.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you have ever wondered how genuine kindness can have an evolutionary backstory without becoming fake.

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