Short Wave - What can a tornado teach us about kindness?

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

One evening in May of 2011, tornado sirens went off in a small Missouri city called Joplin. Thousands of homes were destroyed in the tornado, about a third of the town’s 50,000 residents were displaced and around 160 people died. And in the months following the tornado, the town became known not just for the destruction, but the kindness and cooperation that led to its recovery. Scientists who have studied behavior after mass traumas say, disasters can spark an outpouring of kindness and powerful bonds between strangers. Reporter Pauline Bartolone joins Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong to share the science behind this phenomenon.Interested in more science? Email us your question at [e-mail] public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Shortwavers follow us to make sure you never miss an episode. New episodes of Shortwave drop every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers, Emily Kwong here with reporter Pauline Bartholone. Hi, Pauline. Hey, Emily, good to be here. So today's episode starts with a story that begins about 15 years ago. Right, so we're going to a city in southwestern Missouri, a small city called Joplin,

where a woman named Nanda Nannali lived with her husband and daughter. And on one evening, back in May 2011, the city's tornado sirens went off. Nanda went to the front door to see what was going on. You could see what looked like a wall of rain or something. And it took a second to like understand that's a tornado. That's the tornado. So Nanda and her husband run to a bedroom closet, and they crouch down with their tiny dog, and within seconds, the tornado hits.

It was like standing in between two rail lines with trains going by you, and it's like that, you can't hear anything. And the suction was like pulling your eardrums out. Wow. That sounds terrifying. And Nanda wasn't sure she was going to make it. She held onto her husband and parts of the roof ripped off. She saw the sky above them.

And she started praying. Thinking in my head, if I'm dying, is this going to hurt? Dear God, please don't let it hurt. But then to her surprise, she had a thought about an acquaintance from childhood, someone she barely knew. When you truly think you're going to die, it's really strange the things that come into your head. Wait, so in this moment, an acquaintance popped into her head.

It was the face of a girl Nanda bullied in eighth grade. Thinking this is it, this is going to be the last thing that happens to me. And I'm like, oh my God, I never got to tell her, I'm sorry. I never got to tell her, I'm sorry, you know. So Nanda was lucky that day. About 160 people died in this infamous tornado, but she and her husband survived. And this memory of thinking about the girl she bullied stayed with her. It's so astonishing to me that in a moment where she had every reason to think about herself,

she was having altruistic feelings about someone else. It actually turns out there's a lot of social psychology around this. why we think about other people when disaster strikes and how the very worst moments in our lives can sometimes bring out our best. So today on the show, the social science of catastrophe, compassion, how disasters and traumatic events can bring us together.

You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Pauline, before we get into catastrophe compassion, it's a very interesting topic. Let's note, this episode grew out of a reporting project you're doing about the science of love through a grant from the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Shout out to them. I know. I feel a lot of gratitude. I'm focusing on how love, like acts of service and kindness towards others, shows up after disasters. Amazing. Okay. Let's go back

to Nanda in Joplin. So she survives this tornado and has this interesting takeaway. Right. Yeah. So the tornado ripped through this densely populated town in the central part of Joplin. Thousands of homes were destroyed. And about a third of the town's 50,000 residents were displaced. But here's why we're talking about this tornado 15 years later. So within months, this town became known not just for its tragedy, but for the kindness and cooperation that led to its speedy recovery. So almost 100,000 volunteers from almost every state and Japan came to Joplin to help rebuild. That's amazing the amount of people that came together to help.

It's pretty awesome. Like locals coming out of the woodwork to help, ranchers cooking steaks for volunteers, a university dean who set up cots at an emergency shelter even after losing his own home. So if you think all of this is rare, this kindness after disaster, research shows it's not. Yeah, let's get into the psychology of this. What does science have to say? Yeah, so scientists who have studied behavior after mass traumas say, disasters spark an outpouring of kindness and form a powerful bond between strangers. Stanford social psychologist Jamil Zaki actually has a term for this.

He calls it catastrophe compassion. Catastrophe compassion is the idea that after something terrible happens, people, instead of falling apart and focusing on themselves, come together and try to do for one another. Jamil says you can see this in history time and time again, this ground swell of collaboration after catastrophe. And he says that the science that explains it comes back to identity. Wait, say more. How does this all have to do with identity? We tend to lump ourselves into categories, right? Like, I'm a Christian, I'm a knitter, I'm a New Yorker, and we tend to care and support for people within our own group. Jamil says these group identities may actually keep us apart in our everyday lives.

Like, I don't identify what so-and-so. The knitters and the crochets can knock it along. I'm just kidding. Right, exactly. But disasters blow away these barriers. If you're on a bus that gets bombed or you're in a street that gets hit by a tornado, you suddenly have a lot of a lot in common with the people who are right next to you. You're part of a tribe that you might not have chosen to join,

but one that unites you really powerfully. So another element of this is people tend to bond with the folks they share their emotions with. It's like a really basic idea, right? But the act of sharing about the hard times you've experienced may come easier to you in a disaster setting when you know that the person you're talking to has gone through the same thing. Absolutely. So how does Nanda Narnali fit into all of this, the woman whose story you told earlier? So Nanda showed up with kindness in a different way after the tornado. While she was recovering, she found the girl she had bullied decades ago on social media and sent her a long,

personal apology message. Really? What did the girl say? The girl had so much gratitude. The two are now friends and correspond with each other. And when Nanda moved back to Joplin years later, she started co-running a community center there, which now shelters unhoused people during certain extreme weather events.

So it's kind of come full circle. I don't know how anyone could go through that and come out and not think about how can I help the next person. Wow. And social psychologists have a term for this as well. They call it altruism born of suffering. This can happen outside the disaster setting to anybody with an individual experience of trauma. Psychologists say personal hardships as a child, for example, can germinate into do good behaviors later in life.

when we experience some type of pain, it's almost like we have an easier time accessing that suffering in other people and a stronger desire to do something about it. I mean, it's a basic idea, but it's nonetheless, like, very profound. When I think about stuff I've been through, whether trapped in an elevator, which is a minor problem, honestly, compared to dealing with a family medical crisis, I'm incredibly bonded with those people. and I feel so seen, it's easier for me to talk to those people than anyone else because we shared the same emotional reality.

Right. And that's what the research shows that after you share with that person, you may be more bonded to them and be more likely to help them. And these bonds can be deep. It's amazing to hear this. Because I can imagine some people may find this kind of counterintuitive. Research has also shown that having a lot of adverse childhood experiences can result in behavioral problems down the line with people being less kind. Totally, totally. I mean, Jamil says that both trajectories can exist out of a traumatic pass. And the mystery is what makes someone more likely to do good after a trauma versus when does a trauma make them more likely to harm others? So this is still a mystery. One important factor, though, he says, is whether someone felt supported by someone else when they were going through hard times.

If when you go through something, somebody is there for you, you are much more likely to then want to go and be there for somebody else going through it in the future. We are a reciprocal species. You give what you get. I do want to mention that when it comes to the collective catastrophe compassion, some research has shown that it can, fade, even after a few months. And that temporality also revolves around the idea of identity. Eventually, people's personal identity may become more important than the group survivor identity. And Jamil acknowledged this phenomenon that compassion can be short-lived. The question of whether that sense of togetherness lasts or not depends on whether we revisit it and how much it defines our lives. If you don't have

community. If you don't keep on reminding yourself and coming back together with the people who you suffered with, then catastrophe compassion might fade. That's interesting. And, you know, sometimes I wonder, Pauline, when I see people coming together after disaster, I ask myself, like, why did it take this? Is there any way for there to be unity before a disaster or when there is no disaster to begin with? So this is the question, right? And it's something Zaki has clearly thought a lot about. how to extend compassion to mundane times, right? And he says what helps is just to look for it, because sometimes compassion is already there

and we just need to recognize it. And also acknowledging that everyone does experience some sort of collective suffering, like, for example, the effects of climate change. So to the extent that we can focus ourselves on our shared challenges, as opposed to sort of looking away from them and focusing only on our everyday concerns as individuals,

we can tap into more of that catastrophe compassion. Pauline, thank you so much for diving into this really interesting science around compassion and disaster with us today. Thank you so much, Emily. I love talking about kindness. Pauline Bartolone is a journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and she's a grantee of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Centers spreading love through the media initiative

supported by the John Templeton Foundation. You can hear her full story of how Nanda Nunnally survived the Joplin tornado and reconcile with the girl she bullied as a child on the Audible podcast, this is actually happening. Check it out. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Brent Bachman and Rebecca Ramirez.

Tyler Jones checked the facts. Quasi Lee was the audio engineer. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for. listening to Shortwave from NPR.