Hidden Brain - Romeo and Juliet in Kigali

Episode Date: April 17, 2018

How do you change someone's behavior? Most of us would point to education or persuasion. But what if the answer lies elsewhere? Today we explore a revolutionary insight about human nature, one that will take us on a journey from Budapest to the hills of Rwanda.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. Here's a question we get asked all the time. How do you change someone's behavior? Now, awesome would it be if you, the victim, decided to not get upset? Experts trying to change the way we live our lives. The biggest single cause of global warming, along with deforestation, which is 20% of it, is the burning of fossil fuels. Oil is a problem and coal is the most

serious problem. President is trying to reshape our culture. For we have a choice in this country, we can accept a politics that breeds division or we can come together and say not this time. We like to think we change people's behavior through information, through education, through persuasion. Now these things often don't work, but we keep doing them because we have an unshakable faith in a core assumption about human nature. If you want to shape how people behave, you must first change the way they think. Today we look at a very different approach.

One that will take us on a journey from the outskirts of Budapest in 1944 to the hills of Rwanda a half century later. This week on Hidden Brain, how to change behavior, it's not what you think. When Irvin's style was a small child, his family had a living caretaker named Maria Gogan. Irvin had his own name for her. We call her March, which is an abbreviation of the Hungarian word Marchka, which means cat. That's because much told Irvin and his sister bedtime stories and sometimes, as she told these stories, she'd curl up at the foot of the bed and fall asleep. Outside that cozy house, things were very different. Irvin faced a

dangerous world. You see, Irvin was not just a six-year-old child, but... A six-year-old Jewish child, of course. Hungary was not a friendly place to be Jewish. Since the 1920s, the Hungarian government had passed a series of anti-Jewish laws, restricting Jews from certain occupations, stripping them of the right to vote, prohibiting intermarriage with non-Jews. When World War II erupted, Irvin and his family were in grave danger. Irvin remembers walking with March, pushing his

little sister down the street in a baby carriage. He heard a massive rumbling and turned to see German tanks rolling down the street. In 1944, Germans occupied the country. With the help of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian citizens, they rounded up the country's dues. As nearly half a million people were dragged off to places like Auschwitz, most Hungarians did nothing to help. They simply watched as their friends and neighbors disappeared. Irwin's father was captured. Young Irwin might have faced the same fate, but someone intervened to help.

It was Maria, or much. She took my sister and me into hiding with a Christian family. To feed the children and their mother, much would carry large amounts of dough and the baby carriage to the bakery, and then come back with freshly baked loaves. But one day Hungarian Nazis saw all the bread that she was carrying and they got suspicious. They stopped her.

They told her that if she's going to have juice, she will be killed, had her stand at the wall with her hands up for a very long time. Eventually, a man from the neighborhood, a well-respected Hungarian Nazi, saw what was happening, and he told the others to stop. One might think that after such a terrifying experience, March might have stopped helping the stop family. But she kept on. And she continued to do the same thing for the rest of the time.

Much also found out where Irwin's father was being held in a forced labour camp. She went there and approached the wire fencing. She asked someone to summon Irwin's dad. Through the fence, she told him where she had taken the children. So when the whole group from this forced labour camp was taken to Germany, they had a stop over in Budapest and during that stop over my father escaped. His father found the house with Irwin and his sister. They all hid together and managed to survive the war.

Irwin is very sure that March saved his life and the lives of his immediate family. Other relatives who didn't have someone like March to help them, perished. My father's sister and her two children were killed in Auschwitz. My mother's sister's husband, my uncle uncle died in a forced labor camp. As Irwin grew up, he found himself dwelling on the question, why do people do terrible things to one another?

And is it possible to stop them? Irwin eventually got a PhD in psychology from Stanford and taught clinical psychology at Harvard University. All the while, he kept researching how the Nazis dehumanized the Jews as a stepping stone to genocide. He studied the factors that led to Hitler's rise and Nazi ideology. Evil leaders can get people riled up, but the spark of hate usually doesn't turn into a fire unless people are also experiencing difficult life conditions. So if Germany had not been in the terrible state that it was in, losing a war, a revolution, people in groups fighting on the streets for years, a tremendous depression. If Germany hadn't had that combined with the history of devaluation of Jews, then it is unlikely that Hitler would have been heard.

It's unlikely that Hitler's maniacal, intense, but charismatic capacity to talk to people would have had the kind of effects that it did. So yes, evil people are important, but not alone. Bad leaders don't alone create it. Irvin developed a theory of how genocide comes about. As leaders spread hateful ideologies and as people get used to ostracizing others, hostility between groups slowly evolves into violence. Irvin came up with a term for this gradual process, the continuum of destruction. Violence evolves. There is experimental research that shows that when a person engages in violent action, they are likely to engage in more and greater violence.

In studying a variety of genocide and mass killings, I saw this in every case that people get devalued. The evaluation is justified in terms of the ideology, in reference to the ideology that these people stand in the way of us creating this better world. So this is very important to understand and very important to try to counteract. Irwin tried to imagine what might have stopped this much to violence. From his own experience, he knew that active

bystanders can have a huge impact in saving the lives of victims. But in any conflict, why do some bystanders choose to intervene while so many others stay silent? Why had march taken such great risks to save Irvin and his family. I think she did it because she loved us, because she was connected to us, because she saw us as human beings and didn't accept and go along with the devaluation of Jews that was part of the society at that time. Close personal relationships between Jews and Christians

could inoculate people against stereotypes and prejudice. The close relationship that March had had with him and his family made it possible for her to see Jews as human beings worthy of protection. At a very young age, she was sent out to work as a servant in other families. And she made very good connections to children. And I think to the people she worked for, and she received a lot of love and care from these children back in return

for her love. That was a very important healing experience on her part. So all of these things, I think, contributed to the kind of person she became and her openness and readiness to be altruistic. Irvin felt that his personal experiences provided a roadmap to combat hatred. He started to think about how to inoculate people against hate speech and intolerance. He traveled the world, sharing his ideas at academic conferences. He became a renowned expert on the causes of genocide. You know, when this process begins, when a society begins to harm some group and devalues it more and justifies it and then creates institutions and there is this evolution, the only thing that can stop it is active by

standards. People who are witnesses, who see what is happening and who feel a responsibility and who begin to take action against it. And unfortunately, much of the time on a whole scale, this doesn't happen. But there are wonderful instances when it does. And there are many examples of even single individuals doing things that changes the course of a society. Fifty years after March saved Irwin's life, he began hearing about an unfolding disaster in the East African country of Rwanda.

A radio station was broadcast in urgent messages to the population of 7 million. Very few recordings of these broadcasts exist today. Here's one. Rwanda belongs to those who truly defended, I want to go to the river. I want to go to the river. I want to go to the river. Rwanda belongs to those who truly defended and you, the cockroaches, are not Rwandans. The cockroaches will not escape. Rwanda belongs to those who truly defended and you, the cockroaches, are not Rwandans. The cockroaches will not escape. Rwanda belongs to those who truly defended and you, the cockroaches, are not Rwandans.

The cockroaches were exterminated, God is never unfair. Just as the Nazis portrayed Jews as subhuman, the Rwandan government dominated by the Houtou group dehumanized the Tutsi minority. Their weapon of choice, radio, or a some call it, hate radio. The broadcast had a real effect. One Harvard study calculated that hate radio convinced an additional 50,000 people to murder their neighbors. Human rights experts Samantha Power described this in this way.

Killer is often carried a machete in one hand and a transistor radio in the other. Radio and machete, as the French historian Jean-Pierre Crétien put it, the first to give and receive orders, the second to execute them. I was 29. I had to move by night, you know, freeing through bushes under water. This is Andre Musagara.

During the genocide, Andre lived in Kigali, Rwanda's capital city. He talked to us on Skype from Rwanda. He told me armed men came to his house and dragged everyone outside. You know, you know, say that, remember, they took us outside holding our hands up. I don't know why they came. We had bruised the doors and the curtains they put on. Andre fully expected to be killed. I don't know what prevented them from killing us

because they were having these traditional waypans and whatever, whatever. I was not killed. I asked Andre how many people came to his house with machetes. He had a hard time answering. I couldn't even look at them, straightening the eyes, they were so terrible. It's like they didn't want anyone to identify them,

so they were saying lay down and whatever. Yeah, it was a hard moment. identify them so they would sing lay down and they would do one with that. It was a hard moment. Upheaval in the African state of Rwanda. This is all the streets of Rwanda today. The Red Cross takes the death toll on the tens of thousands. Almost a half million tutuses and moderate tutus have been massacred by another half million.

Roving hands of drunk youngsters carrying machetes at soldiers is at genocide and what is being done to stop the killing. I don't want to remember about this. By the time the Rwandan patriotic front defeated the Huto government a few months later, the country was in ruins. As many as a million people had been murdered, the majority of the Tutsi population was dead. Many of their killers were roaming free. And now the nation had to rebuild.

How can a country come back from such devastation? Would it ever be possible to rebuild trust? For Irwin's tab, it all seemed eerily familiar. A genocide had unfolded, and yet again, the world had sat on its hands and done nothing. I remember seeing pictures of bodies of people killed floating down rivers. And I do remember being very upset that nobody was doing anything. The community of nations wasn't doing anything. That the

United States was stepping aside. Many countries weren't just stepping aside. They were actively turning a blind eye. In Rwanda, when the genocide began, many countries sent in military missions to take their own nationals out. The evacuation of American citizens is proceeding smoothly. French troops have entered the capital of Pigà,

to evacuate French nationals. Belgian troops are reported to be on say. Some 300 US Marines are standing by in Burundi to help with evacuations if needed. They flew them out and, in a sense, communicated to the perpetrators that we are not involved, you are free to do whatever you do. If we completely exterminate the cockroaches, nobody in the world will judge us.

Irvin had been speaking at conferences around the world about the causes of genocide, the trauma faced by survivors, and how to work toward reconciliation. But the news from Rwanda told him it was time to try to put into action the theories he had spent decades developing. Simply giving speeches was not enough. Irvin felt he had to act. He and his partner, trauma specialist Laurie Pearlman,

got on a plane and went to Rwanda. There was a real risk that violence could flare up again. We definitely, clearly, went with the intention of creating the program that tries to help, that tries to promote healing, tries to promote reconciliation, so that people live better lives, and ties to prevent future violence. Preventing future violence, it was something that Alphonse Bacussi was thinking about as well. He was director of Rwanda's conflict management department, like every other Rwandan, Alphonse had himself been affected by the genocide. Now, even as he came to terms with his own

suffering, he was given the task of trying to heal the wounds of his people. I spoke to Alphonse recently on a scratchy phone line to Kigali. So you are affected and you are asked to hit people. So you're affected but you also have to simultaneously help the people who are affected, other people who are affected. That is why I'm saying about Daed Mah. As he battled his dilemma, Alphonse dug deep into his past back to happier days before the genocide. He went back to his time in college in high school, and

he remembered one thing that he had loved as a student, the theatre. The festival in my second at the school I used to play some drama. I was in... I was one of the to act in my team. It was clear that radio could convince people to be violent. Rwandan officials, Irvin and a production team led by a Dutch NGO, Radio Labine Valencia, wanted to prove that radio could also bring people together. The idea they came up with? A radio, so popular.

Rwandan officials had successfully used an educational drama to teach people how to practice safe sex. Alphonse, Irvin and the production team thought that a radio drama could teach ordinary citizens how to spot and then reverse the early stages of the continuum of destruction. Irvin had about a dozen messages he wanted to sprinkle throughout the show, all were derived from nearly 50 years of research and reflected his own experiences during the Holocaust. We're going to look at three of those messages. First, violence evolves slowly. Genocidal leaders don't always start out planning to commit genocide. At the beginning, they are not so committed. The vision that we are going to kill these people is not there.

That evolves part of this evolution. Point number two, bystanders matter. In conditions that need to great violence, bystanders have to act early. Because the later it is, the more leaders and the society gets committed to turning against and harming these people. Number three, when people form close personal relationships with those from other groups, this provides a barrier to the spread of prejudice. When two people from unfriendly groups marry one another, this can reduce hostility between the groups,

or when wanted to convey this very simple message. The hope that internal marriage would be a positive thing. The production team assembled a group of writers to develop the right narrative. The brainstorming sessions span hours, days, weeks. Ours and hours and hours, looking over the hills of Kigali, developing this original radio program. this original radio program. In 2004, one decade after genocide had devastated the country, the program made its debut. It was called... When we come back,

we'll hear about the Rwandan love story that captivated a divided country. The question was, would it work? I'm Shankar Vidantam and you're listening to Hidden Brain. This is NPR. I'm Shankar Vidantam and this is... Just kidding, this is Hidden Brain. The radio soap opera Musaik Awair, which means new dawn, was making its debut.

The show follows two fictional villages, Muhumoro and Bumanzi, with a backstory that inevitably leads to conflict. Here's producer George Weiss, who led the NGO Radio Lab in Avalencia that launched the program. We located these two places on two hills opposite one another and in the middle there is a field which is fertile and through some historic injustice was given to the second village, Bumanzi. And then a little catastrophe happens, a bridge collapses, somebody gets killed, and people start feeling very insecure.

This is in parallel to Irwin Staupp's, what he calls, difficult life conditions. Irwin Staupp knew from his own experience during the Holocaust that difficult life conditions provide fertile soil for hatred to grow. Musicawea combine Irwin's research into the causes of genocide with Alphonse Paguzi's background in theatre. The hope was, in the fictitious conflict between the Muhumoro and the Bomancy, who do's and tootsies in the audience would recognize their own story. And they might learn three concrete ways to move past their divisions.

As the Rwandan writers and producers created the drama, one member of the team was... Andrei Musagara. Yes, that's the same Andrei who survived the genocide, who didn't know why the men with machetes didn't kill him, who didn't want to be reminded of that traumatic moment. Today, Andrei is the director of Musekiawea. So, to some extent, it opened my mind and now I am different from the guy I was using

yellow side and even before. Andre and the other Rowanden writers try to weave psychological messages into their narrative. Violence evolves slowly. Bystanders matter. Intermarriage can reduce conflict. Over the past 14 years, there have been more than 700 episodes, each one about 20 minutes long. At a story workshop at the beginning of each season, the writers decide how the plot is going to evolve all while weaving in the messages approved by the academic team they are working with.

Ruadhan society has worked hard over the past 25 years to try and erase the divisions between Houtu and Tutsi to ensure that tribal rivalries never again put lives in danger. Here I'm speaking with showwriter Charles Rokundo. Can I ask you I don't know if this is appropriate to ask you or not so forgive me if it's not appropriate but were you from the Houtu community or the Tutsi community? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, in one it's very difficult. In Rwanda it's frowned upon to discuss the Houtu or Tutsi past. In some cases, you can even be jailed under a law prohibiting something called divisionism.

The official position of the Rwandan government is that there is no ethnicity there. Everyone is Rwandan. In the soap opera, as hostilities flared between the communities on two opposing hills, the writers needed characters for listeners to identify with. So on those two hill tops, both alike in dignity, they created a pair of star cross lovers, Shema and Batamurisa. What are you saying? What are you saying? I'm going to tell you something about Batamurisa. I'm not saying that, I'm saying that. I'm saying that.

I'm saying that I'm not saying that. People are very interested in love. So by telling them this love story, they are easily connected. And through this story, they could learn that above the differences, they can find something to unite the way more. Yeah. Andrei explains that Mosecawea is a Romeo and Julia type story differences they can find something to unite them. Andrei explains that Mosekiawea is a Romeo and Julia type story where young lovers have to battle the animosity their families feel toward each other.

Just like Shakespeare's Montague's and Capulets, the romance causes all kinds of conflict between the two hills. The show was a runaway success. In Rwanda, nearly everyone listens to the radio and researchers have estimated that most of the population was listening to Mosekawaya. Anyone associated with the show became a big star and it seemed like the messages were getting through, at least anecdotally. One of the show's villains is a man named Ruta Ghanira. He's wary of the other side, he thinks they are stealing crops, keeping his village down. The name Ruta Ghanira became used in casual conversation

when someone was acting like a jerk. Here's producer George Weiss. Well, we heard people describe conflict situations by using the names of our characters. You know, oh, you don't be a Ruta Ganeera. It seemed like the Rwandans were getting the message. But were they really? How could the show creators know for sure? Enter social scientist Betsy Palak, who is now a professor

of psychology at Princeton University. I was sitting in New Haven at Yale University, and I found a report about this radio cell pop-up. At the time, Betsy was a graduate student, trying to figure out a topic for her PhD field research. She reached out to the show creators. They agreed to work with her to measure whether the show was changing people's beliefs

and making them more tolerant toward each other. Betsy wanted to do something very ambitious, conduct a controlled study in a country that had just been through an incredibly brutal civil war. Remember, the creators of the show wanted to convince Rowandins about three things. Violence evolved slowly, bystanders matter, intermarriage reduces conflict. But were the messages getting through, were Rowandins adopting these new beliefs? Betsy wanted to measure the changes, and she wanted to know where the ordinary people were treating their fellow citizens differently. We ran it like a medical trial in which we assigned certain communities to listen to

this reconciliation, so Bobbra, and other communities to listen to a different so Bobbra that was about a different topic, specifically HIV AIDS and Women's Health. So once a month, for an entire year, the Musaikawaya group gathered around a portable stereo and listened. They listened as Batamuriza's father died and Shema came to pay his respects. They listened as Batamuriza fell in love with the forbidden Shema. They listened as heavy rain destroyed a bridge between the hilltops. As Ruta Ghanira's son died from malnutrition and he blamed the other village for the death. As Ruta Ghanira ran for office

and planned to invade the other village. As all this happened, people listened. And as is often the case in Rwandan society, they listened together in groups. They weren't just hearing the story on their own. They were seeing the reactions on the faces of their friends and neighbors. They wept together. They laughed together. They shouted out in encouragement when Bhatamurisa was dejected. Ihangane Shah, meaning hold on dear. After one year, Betsy and her team interviewed the volunteers and measured their beliefs.

Had they learned the lessons, had their attitudes to what other Rwandans changed, Betsy asked them about Irvin's three ideas that the Rwandan writers were trying to instill. Number one, genocide doesn't happen suddenly. The radio program taught that violence accumulates slowly. It doesn't happen all at once. I saw this in every case. Violence progressively evolves. People get devalued. There was just one problem.

The listeners in the study? They disagreed. We had a number of people who were in our study who said to us at the end, I don't think that's true. The way the genocide happened for me, it came like a sudden rain. Lesson number two, bystanders matter. It was one of Irvin's most important guiding principles,

the thing he had learned from much, the woman who had saved him during the Holocaust. When a society begins to harm some group, the only thing that can stop it is actually bystanders. But here too, the idea that bystanders can make a difference didn't seem to be getting through to listeners. When asked whether bystanders who remain silent bear some responsibility for the evil actions of others, there was no difference between those who'd listened to the soap opera and the control group who hadn't. People essentially did not think that bystanders could make any difference.

And what about lesson number three? Intermarriage can reduce hostility. That didn't work either. People told Betsy, I don't really believe that ethnic intermarriage will bring peace. I just lived through a genocide where I watched who to men kill their tootsie wives and children. So, you know, I don't personally buy that.

On all three counts, the soap opera hadn't changed people's beliefs. As entertainment, the show was a hit, but as an experiment, designed to change hearts and minds, move two traumatized people toward reconciliation, the show was a failure. Musaikawaii was nothing more than a fun soap opera. Or was it? There was one dimension where Betsy found the soap opera did make a positive difference, a big difference, and this dimension was even more important than what people believed. When we come back, why the soap opera was far more successful than it might first appear.

I'm Shankar Vedantam, and you're listening to Hidden Brain. This fool, then it might first appear. I'm Shankar Vidantum and you're listening to Hidden Brain. This is NPR. I'm Shankar Vidantum and this is... Okay fine, hidden brain. We're talking about the Rwandan Radio-Sopara that captivated the country with its stories of love and reconciliation after the genocide. That was the good news.

The bad news? Despite the hopes of the creators, the show didn't change people's beliefs. But there was one metric much more important than people's own beliefs. Actual behavior. As the writers of the radio drama went out into the world to speak with listeners of the show, they came across people who lived on two hills near Kigali, very similar to the hills portrayed in the show. Here's director people who lived on two hills near Kigali, very similar to the hills portrayed in the show.

Here's director, André Musagara. If the Soap Opera was a reflection of real life, this was a reflection of the Soap Opera. The Hutu and Tutsi inhabitants on the two hills that Andre visited were just like the Muhumoro and the Bomancy. During the genocide, one group had tried to kill the other. The Hutu hill, during genocide, they went to kill people on the other side and they hooted properties and all that. And the up-take genocide during this transition or justice process, and who to hear was tried? He's talking about the Kachacha, a series of community courts held in the years following the genocide. It put about one million people on trial. There's debate about the specific

numbers, but the vast majority of those tried were found guilty with crimes ranging from vandalism to murder. The crime it was not very good between these two hives, but there was one listener of Musa Keoia on one hill and he went to find his colleague from the other hill. They said together, they shared the via and they said, no, this should not continue this way. And they decided to reunite there. Heroes and they succeeded. Life was imitating art. Musekyewaya had characters playing the role of active bystanders, peacemakers. Now, that

was happening in the real hills outside Kigali. Even though Musekiawea listeners told Betsy Pallik's research team that bystanders couldn't make a difference, bystanders were stepping up to prevent violence. They united and they were inspired by what they heard from our show Musekiawea. We are so proud and we are happy that we are playing a significant role in the reconciliation

in Guanda. And it was more than just anecdotal. Betsy's data found that even though listeners' beliefs didn't change, their behavior did. Take the question of Intermarriage, for instance. Musekya Weyer-Listener has told Betsy's team that they didn't think intermarriage would lead to peace. But that's not all they said. They said, however, I do think that now we should allow our children to intermary. I think that this is the thing that Rwandans are doing. We all think it's a good thing moving forward.

This is a good example of a distinction between what you personally believe, but what you perceive to be a growing trend. What's fascinating here is that you are finding that the message is in fact not changing their own personal opinions, but it's still changing their behavior. That's right. I think if you've reflect on your own behavior, it's hard to find a time when,

as you were deciding on what to do, you didn't consider someone else, or you didn't consider the reaction that your behavior might draw off from someone else. When it comes to changing how people behave, it turns out there is a much more powerful driver than people's own beliefs. People don't always do what they believe, but they usually do what they think everyone else believes. We are such social people. If we think that our behavior is going to be really going in the other lane, in the other direction, from what people who matter to us, from what they're doing. That really restrains our behavior, so we might think one thing, but eventually do another. Not because we're lemmings, but because we're all trying to kind of move in the same direction

with the flock. And if we violate those norms, if we behave in ways that disappoint members of our community, we fear that, and so even if we may believe something different, our behavior will conform to the social norm. In essence, Betsy's research demonstrated that even after just one year, the show was working. Even if it didn't change people's beliefs, it was changing social norms, what people thought was expected of them. The same thing happens in other contexts. Take, for instance, same-sex marriage in the United States. Hundreds of people were in front of the US Supreme Court this morning waiting. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution

guarantees the right to marry as a fundamental liberty for both straight and gay couples. And historic victory for gay rights today. The Supreme Court. Betsy followed ordinary Americans at the time to see if the court decision changed their own views. Again, people's personal beliefs didn't change, but their behavior did. What moved everyone in the same direction was this perception of whether other Americans

support same-sex marriage and whether it would become more accepted in the future. The Supreme Court ruling in effect told people, the United States now believes same-sex marriage is okay. You could still think otherwise, but if you acted in ways that showed you didn't agree with the consensus, you risked being left behind. Even worse, you risked becoming an outcast. And you may remember that time where people's Facebook walls exploded in rainbows. Once the social norm about gay marriage changed, it emboldened supporters and prompted many dissenters to shrug their

shoulders and accept the new normal. The same principle works in all sorts of places. Take bullying, for example. Betsy has found that norms play a powerful role in encouraging bullying and discouraging it. I've been studying bullying and conflict as it plays out in Americans, public schools, and what kept hitting me was that at some point certain types of conflict and prejudice become normal to the people who are living there.

The central insight of this research is that people go along with the flow rather than their own beliefs. Betsy found the same thing in Rwanda. People who listened to Musek Awayah began supporting intermarriage even if they didn't personally think that intermarriage was a good thing. It all comes back to this idea that what it means to be human is to belong socially to a group. And so we're all trying to figure out

the rules of those groups. Betsy realized that one unintended way the soap opera had a big effect was that people had listened together. They thought they were just listening to the show, but they were also taking in the reactions of friends and neighbors. When other people expressed dismay as Ruta Ghanira got in the way of the Star Cross lovers, that sent a message. My fellow Rwandans don't like people like Ruta Ghanira.

After the year of testing was over, Betsy's team gave each group a portable stereo and 14 cassette tapes of the radio program. It was ostensibly a reward for volunteering, but it was actually part of the experiment too. After presenting the stereo, a research assistant suggested that the group could decide how best to share it. In the communities that had been listening to this reconciliation radio program, it was a little bit counterintuitive at first, but they fought more over their common resources that we gave them. And the reason why that was exciting to us is that one of the messages of this radio program was, you should descend against authority. You should make your voice heard.

In the communities that had not been listening in a dedicated way to these reconciliation soap operas, basically one person proposed, we give it to the local authority, they will decide for us. Everyone said, good, and moved on. Among the Musekia Weir group, the discussion was much more lively. Usually someone would make the same proposal. This is what is customary to do in Rwandan communities. But then someone would raise their hand and say, I don't know, the local authority hasn't been coming to listen to all these shows with us.

Why should we sign it over to him? And then maybe someone else would raise their hand and say, I think we should give it to a woman. They are way more responsible than men. And there would be a healthy debate about that. And then people would decide on what to do. So I went back and I said, look, we have caused healthy debate. This is something to celebrate.

When I spoke to the Rwandan leader Alphonse Bakuji recently, it was close to the anniversary of the 1994 genocide. He told me he was incredibly proud of all that Rwandans had accomplished in the intervening quarter century. Mosecawea, along with many other interventions, had made a difference. Irvin's tower beccomplished what few scholars ever do. He got to see his ideas put into action. More important, he got to see his ideas make a difference. If there's a continuum of destruction, Irvin helped to show there is also a continuum of benevolence. People can learn tolerance

by watching what others do, even fictional characters living on make-believe hilltops. Overn told me he admires Betsy Pallik's study, but he disagrees with some of her conclusions. Betsy found that people's behavior changed not because their beliefs evolved, but because their perceptions of social norms did. But urban things that isn't possible to easily separate personal beliefs from one's perception of social norms. Let me just say, there is no argument about the findings, the results. The only difference between her and me is the interpretation of the results. The results are clear, they are there, and they are meaningful and significant. One point Erwin makes is that Betsy's study was conducted during the first year of the show.

By the end of that year, there were many unresolved issues in the narrative. Erwin thinks that if the study had been conducted later, for example, after the villain Ruta Ghanira experiences a change of heart, the study might have picked up changes in people's attitudes, not just their behavior. Now, you might argue that the academics are splitting hairs. I asked Irvin about that.

I'm going to play you an extended excerpt from our exchange, because it leads up to something really important. As I said, I think the theoretical differences about why the behavior changed are less important than the fact that behavior actually changed in the direction that was intended. And as you point out, this evaluation was done after one year of a program that lasted now 14 years. And those points are very well made. But do you think actually it's important whether the difference comes from norms or beliefs or values, or is it actually just more important that people's behavior changed and who cares what the actual mechanism was? Well, I think that for this, in our case, after one year, what's really important is

that behavior changed and some thinking has changed. But there is one reason why it is also important what leads to change. And that is when a society moves towards violence, what we hope is that people understand and can't foresee what's going to happen. That was one reason we talked to them about the origins of violence Now things evolve slowly and at each point a person can say well, it's just one little thing I'm not doing anything and then they're the next point the same thing But if you can't foresee where this is going to lead you are more likely to get involved early, right now

if your views depend on social norms, as a society begins to move towards violence, the social norm is that you move together with everybody as towards violence. But if you personally believe that you should take action, then you are more likely to go contrary to the direction of your group. Irwin wants to believe that the values of ordinary Rwandans changed because he wants to believe that the transformation in Rwanda is here to stay, that if hatred were to start broadcasting again, ordinary Rwandans would stand up to it because they now have different values. But if Betsy is right, this means that Rwandans began acting in a more tolerant fashion in large part because tolerance became the new social norm. This raises a troubling question. If social norms can change in a matter of

months from hate to tolerance, can't they go back just as easily in the other direction? Betsy study provides an important lesson and not just for people in Rwanda. The currents that govern human behavior are fickle. If you want to make change and then preserve it, you need to be eternally vigilant. After several years of will they or won their drama, Shema and Batamuriza finally get married. Ruandans got so excited about the wedding, about the forbidden love between these two villages, that they wanted to witness an actual wedding. They demanded that the producers of the radio show hold a wedding in the national stadium so that the whole country could show up to watch.

Here's the director, André Musagara. We thought of them, Shema and the atomizers waiting in country taking place at the National Stadium because they have many friends. So, if you want to take part in their waiting, this is the way you are going to do it. Kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kamiya, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao, kakao Friends, peace is a plant that is transplanted and maintained by people together. It is the fruit of love for your neighbor. Be the first to maintain them. Where these hatred, they do not grow. Where these love, they grow and flourish.

For Andre Moussagara and the other creators of the show, the goal is to keep that message going as long as the audience is interested. Mussecawea is now in its 14th year and shows no signs of stopping. It's a soap opera. The twists are endless. Today's show was produced by Matthew Schwartz and edited by Tara Boyle. Our team includes Jennifer Schmidt, Reyna Cohen, Parth Shah, Laura Quarelle and Thomas Lu. Jackson Vungani did our voiceovers and translations. Special thanks to Radio Lab in Evalencia, the Dutch NGO that spearheaded the creation of Ponseca Waya and got us in touch with the writers of the show and Rwandan leaders.

I'm Shankar Vedantam, see you next week, and remember, don't be a Ruta Gainira.