Murder Mystery

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. We often think of the media we consume as food for the mind. The right books, the uplifting films, the inspiring podcasts, we believe that these will make us wiser, kinder, better people. The Chinese philosopher Lao Sir is supposed to have said, Watch your thoughts, they become your words, watch your words, they become your actions, watch your actions, they become your habits, watch your habits, they become your character.

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. By this logic, if we want to be good, kind, and ethical people, we should watch movies about good people. Read books about kindness and consume stories about high-minded individuals who always do the right thing. Glance at any list of bestsellers or movies that crush at the box office, and you don't see many high-minded plots and altruistic characters. No, you find people who lie and cheat, family members who betray one another.

friends who are not good friends. If we are what we consume, surely this does not bode well for us. Nowhere is this tension more acute than in stories of violence, gore and killing, especially in horror movies. The goal of all the spattered blood, severed limbs, and blood curdling shrieks is to make you horrified, not edified. If most of us want to be good people, what explains the enduring popularity of books and movies that show us not just the worst of human nature,

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