the social experiment albums

Surf is the long-awaited collaboration between the unbilled Chance the Rapper, his band The Social Experiment, and musical ally Donnie Trumpet (a.k.a. Nico Segal). Chance gets his time to shine, spitting acrobatic rhymes throughout, but clearly this is a team effort focused on moving minds and butts. Flecks of big-band instrumentation lend sparkle, while folks like Erykah Badu, Busta Rhymes, Janelle Monáe, and Big Sean provide cameos. The vibe is reminiscent of Native Tongues or Soulquarians, a positive space to submit to creative freedom and unpredictable flow, just like the ocean itself.

May 29, 2015 16 Songs, 51 minutes ℗ 2015 Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment

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Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment

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Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment is genre-bending hip-hop and R&B project led by American trumpeter and producer Nico Segal. After a stint playing with the rap collective Kids These Days, Segal founded The Social Experiment in 2014 alongside fellow Chicagoan Chance The Rapper, Nate Fox, Greg Landfair Jr., and Peter Cottontale. Preceded by the singles “Sunday Candy” and “Nothing Came to Me,” their studio debut Surf arrived in May 2015. Featuring uncredited cameos by Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, J. Cole, and Janelle Monáe, Surf was released exclusively via streaming and proved to be both a critical and commercial success, garnering praises from the specialized media and accumulating over 600,000 downloads on the first week after its release. In the years that followed, Nico Segal dropped the nickname Donnie Trumpet and went on to form The JuJu Exchange with Julian Reid and Nova Zaii.

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D.R.A.M. Teams With the Social Experiment's Donnie Trumpet for New Version of "$"

Chance the Rapper Hints at Kanye Collab, Performs "Sunday Candy" and "Paranoia" on "Windy City Live"

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Songs We Love

Songs we love: donnie trumpet & the social experiment, 'familiar'.

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Chance The Rapper's band, Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, just released a new album called Surf . Christopher Polk/Getty Images hide caption

Chance The Rapper's band, Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, just released a new album called Surf .

Picking one song from Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment's ebullient new album to talk about is no easy task. Surf is so layered, so textured and such a vibrant body of work that singling out one song feels almost like you're not doing the entire album justice.

The group consists of Donnie Trumpet, a.k.a. Nico Segal, trumpeter, bandleader, producer and sometimes percussionist; keyboardist and producer Peter "Peter Cottontale" Wilkins; producer and engineer Nate Fox; drummer Greg "Stix" Landfair Jr.; and, most famously, Chancellor " Chance The Rapper " Bennett. Surf is an expansive group effort that combines live instrumentation and drum machines — as well as sung, rapped and sing-rapped vocals — into a lush, nearly hour-long musical experience in which Donnie's trumpet provides the linchpin. And, though it features the talents of Busta Rhymes, Big Sean and, of course, Chance, Surf is only a rap album in the loosest sense. On iTunes, it's categorized as "pop." In this instance, that just means music that's intended to have broad, genre-blurring appeal. Surf is definitely pop, but more precisely a rap-, neo-soul- and jazz-inflected version of it.

Yes, it's hard to pick a favorite on a fun record that features surprise appearances from Janelle Monae and newcomer D.R.A.M., but today "Familiar" is the one that's doing it for me. In the song, we find Chance, alongside King Louie and Migos' Quavo, addressing the timeworn topic of groupies. A rap cliche, for sure, but their approach here is comical enough to make a cynical rap fan forget just how familiar the subject matter is.

"Familiar" is their way of saying, "We've seen your kind before, you're not original" to those who would assume that good looks are enough to impress this discerning trio. For his verse, Chance uses reincarnation as a metaphor in his dismissal of superficiality: "We met in a life where we were both cats / Our owners were neighbors, have fun with that / What's funnier is yours had eight different cats / The same shade of black and I'm blind as a bat."

And, while Chance gets abstract, fellow Chicagoan King Louie gets personal, bringing family into the fray: "If your mama say you special then your mama ain't the truest / With her lyin' ass / With her fine ass / With her giant ass / She regular, too." Perhaps the most surprising guest appearance comes from Quavo, whom we're more accustomed to hearing over the synth and piano trap sounds of producers Zaytoven and Metroboomin. Instead, in "Familiar" we get his sing-song warble over muted horn riffs and handclaps, as he recognizes all-too-familiar faces from video shoots. Like the album as a whole, it's counter-intuitively charming. Looks like the Social Experiment is a success.

The self-released Surf is available now, for free download.

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Review: the only thing to say about donnie trumpet, chance the rapper and sox’s ‘surf’ is thank you.

By Stacy-Ann Ellis

Stacy-Ann Ellis

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Good luck finding the flaws in Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment’s latest LP

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but it’s easy to feel like listening to music these days is a chore. Pressing play on tunes every calendar date of the year—some of which are great, many not so much—just for the sake of being in the know and keeping readers up to speed gets personally draining. Unlike consumers with the luxury of selectivity, it’s our job as music journalists to take it all in: the same 10 radio cuts in heavy rotation, empty tales of b-tches and hoes freely hopping in rappers’ whips,  third grade reading level  lyrics knocking around on trap 808 beats, backdrop songs to tossing crumpled up George Washingtons at quaking cheeks. Eventually, it all begins to feel soulless. However, every so often, a record comes along that really, truly moves you and shifts your whole mood. Something that you actually  want  to listen to over and over again. An unexpected cup of paint spilled onto your record player, swirling around spectrum ribbons as it plays. For me (and for many, according to Chance The Rapper ), Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment ‘s surprise release,  Surf , was that necessary burst of color. And for it, I’m thankful.

Big Sean Clears The Air, Doechii Excels, A$AP Rocky Acts Swiftly, And Other Hip-Hop Releases

Surf is easily one of the most refreshing musical releases since the drought of 2014 . Totaling at 16 tracks, the freebie LP takes the emotions on an uphill roller coaster ride. From the woozy intro to the doo wop-style closer, the album zeroes in on the communication of positive vibes and moods through robust instrumentation. It’s as if the creative troupe’s instruments of choice—Chance with the raps, Peter Cottontale and Nate Fox on the keys, Greg Landfair Jr. on the drums and Donnie Trumpet with his namesake tool and backing vocals—tell stories of their own. Trumpets whisper mournful, sinister secrets on the lyricless “Nothing Came To Me.” “Something Came To Me” (also instrumental) is the response to the first song, with more answers than questions communicated through gradient horns belted across a college football field.  The Lion King -inspired congo drums of “Windows” tip-toe around you, beckoning you to the center of the dance circle. Bumping bass strings paired with the triumphant horns of “Go” crash over eardrums like a wave. Sunny steel pans and church organs of “Sunday Candy” ignite spiritual euphoria in pew-bound listeners. Jubilant is the operative adjective for the sonics of this LP.

From the album’s hazy promo moments to well after it was released, the crew of indie darlings made it known that this diverse culmination of sounds and styles was a group effort. The spotlight never hovers over one person too long before shifting the focus to another musical feat. Despite the star-studded roster of talent stitched into the stanzas—you’ll hear Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, Jeremih, Janelle Monae, J.Cole, Big Sean, BJ the Chicago Kid, B.o.B, Migos member, Quavo and more—a majority of them are unnamed on the tracklist. All featured voices here are used as sonic paintbrushes rather than a boast of star power. Chance and Co. act as unifiers (think of a less self-centered DJ Khaled), bringing together legends from the big leagues and buzzing starlets who still require the occasional Google search.

On the appropriately titled “Warm Enough,” spoken word vibes are conjured up between Cole and Noname Gypsy (who appeared on “Lost” from Chano’s much more melancholy  Acid Rap ). “Slip Slide” marries a drumline style marching band with Busta’s jovial tongue twisters, B.o.B’s charismatic bars, BJ’s soulful runs and Monae’s on-and-off coos. Kyle’s pleasantly kiddish drawl about Instagram likes gets sandwiched between Jeremih’s high register refrains and Big Sean’s rags to riches story on “Wanna Be Cool.” While clowning dime-a-dozen IG models on “Familiar,” King Louie and Quavo trade sing-songy bars as opposed to ratchet raps and Ady Suleiman croons soulfully about visceral feelings as Ms. Badu slides into our DM’s on “Rememory.” On “Windows,” Raury’s gentle scats blow in the wind beneath Chance’s cautious warnings, building horns and pitter-patter percussion. Beyonce’s  it  pick D.R.A.M. melts off the end of the too-short “Caretaker” while  Mike Golden , Lili K , Jesse Boykins III and Joey Purp trade upbeat funk and soul on “Go.” The syrupy sweet and infectious vocals of Eryn Allen Kane and Jamila Woods are practically here, there and everywhere on Surf . It’s a beautiful amalgam of familiar and unfamiliar sounds.

Even beyond album guests,  Surf  is a celebration of community, which falls in line with what Chance the Rapper preaches on and off wax. It’s all reflective of his communal approach to living life and making music. Lyrically, songs take a look at friendships, relationships, family, his city and the love, joy and gratefulness that orbit around such entities. “Homies breathing/Families eating/Mama singing, is a miracle,” Chance sings earnestly on “Miracle.” Thanks to Chance, uplifting mantras grandmothers preach to youngsters about patience (“Just Wait”), self-love (“Wanna Be Cool”) and getting your footing in life (“Slip Slide”) go down like sweets instead of Robitussin. Surf —which only has four songs with curse words on them—has a message for everyone.

Unlike VIBE’s knee-jerk review , I sat with Surf several times. I’ve played it at work. I’ve played it on the train. I’ve played it walking down the street bumping through idle tourists. I’ve played it on the car with family. I’ve played it in the car for strangers. Although the track list and order remained identical, the experience felt like a new one every time I played it. A different song jutted out at me, begging for a replay. A new ad lib was unveiled. A new favorite was almost declared (it’s hard to unseat “Sunday Candy” as the undisputed shining star of the project). There was always a feeling of newness with every play. Of discovery. Of diversity. Of joy. It’s music that makes you think, feel, and most importantly, smile, which is hard to find when sifting though stuff that only knocks when coming out of club speakers and in between spilled drinks.

Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment truly have a gem with Surf . Since the album is so inclusive of multiple styles and audiences, it’s a damn near dudless project. And it’s free, so you can’t really complain even if you wanted to nitpick and find something. Based on all the freebies dropped in the months prior to Surf (“Hiatus”,   “Wonderful Everyday”, “Lady Friend”,   “No Better Blues” and “I Am Very Very Lonely”), it’s clearly not about making money for Chance & Co. For them, creating music is about an honest desire to make the world a happier, more thoughtful place one song at a time. What’s not to love about that? —Stacy-Ann Ellis

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Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment – Surf

• 3.2 Community Rating
• 26 Rated the Album
• 11 Gave it a 5/5

Chicago is an urban metropolis divided into sections. From pockets of extreme wealth to areas many fear to venture, the Windy City can be as dangerous as it is beautiful, often pitting its citizens against each other. These social clashes have produced artists like Common and Kanye West , each taking a different approach to detailing the barrier that splits their city into pieces. Yet, while many focus on the plight that has befallen Chicago, few artists have done more to unite the city than its prodigal son  Chance the Rapper .

Under the cover of darkness, Chance, along with fellow artists Donnie Trumpet (trumpet) , Peter Cottontale (keys), Nate Fox (production) and Greg “Stix” Landfair Jr. (drums) – who have come together under the name The Social Experiment – dropped their debut album Surf to much fanfare. The album has been highly anticipated since it was first announced last fall. Much like The Social Experiment itself, the album’s release was unorthodox; it was released without notice (a trend becoming more common of late), given to fans free of charge, neither stated nor hyped up its extensive features list and focused on the collective rather than the individual.

In this way, Surf represents a backlash against everything Hip Hop has been building to over the past decade, from the overdone opulence to the “me over we” drama that has become synonymous with the genre. That’s because Surf is more than just a Hip-Hop album – and far from a follow-up to Chance’s critically acclaimed Acid Rap mixtape; these 16 tracks are a work of art.

Happiness. That’s what first comes to mind when trying to unlock an album as complex as Surf . Projecting a lighthearted feel without sacrificing its musical integrity, the album establishes this upbeat mood right from the jump on tracks like the gospel-tinged “Miracle” and the jazzy, horn-filled dance anthem “Slip Side” featuring Busta Rhymes and B.O.B. This may be surprising for fans of mixtape Chance, who could rattle off anger-filled verses such as “22 Offs” ( 10 Day ) and rap anthems like “Juice” ( Acid Rap ), but to those who have followed him over the past year as he left his boyhood behind, it will come as no surprise.

Like many artists, including featured emcees Big Sean and J. Cole , Chance has done all that he can to help improve the situation of those in his hometown community since rising to fame. His presence at open-mic nights on Chicago’s Southside has helped attract hundreds of aspiring artists, encouraging them to not only empower themselves, but to shape their surroundings as well.

This is a far cry from the introspective yet angsty young Chance of his mixtape past, with poetic quotes like, “Who are you to tell me I don’t want you / The way flesh wants freedom / The way greed love need, the way kings need kingdoms / You don’t know what I know, what I’m capable of / What I slaved for and traded in favors /And gave up for you what I gave up for love,” off of “Warm Enough” featuring NoName Gypsy and J. Cole showing off the emcee’s growth. Freed of all prior burdens – and any label constrictions – Surf showcases The Social Experiment’s determination to find peace of mind over all else – even financial security. It pays off.

“I don’t wanna be cool, I don’t wanna be cool. I don’t want you to be me, you just should be you,” croon Chance and fellow Chicagoan Jeremih on “Wanna Be Cool.” It sounds like a motto found in a D.A.R.E. pamphlet, but The Social Experiment’s organic feel makes even lyrics like these ring true. The use of live instrumentation found throughout Surf, including Donnie Trumpet’s ability to alter the sound of his chosen instrument on “Nothing Came To Me” and light up tracks with his jazzy inflection on others like “Just Wait,” prove that The Social Experiment is willing to back up these claims a well.

The Social Experiment’s message is more important than a catchy radio hook, and the aforementioned memorandum can be found throughout, with songs like “Windows” preaching originality with lyrics like, “Don’t you look up to me, don’t trust a word I say / Don’t you end up like me, if you learn one thing today.”

However, some of the album’s features stray from this thought process, with King Louie ’s feature on “Familiar” and the latter half of Big Sean’s verse on “Wanna Be Cool” serving more as distractions than key additions to their respective songs. The album’s three interludes are also hit or miss, with “Questions” veering off course when instrumental tracks like “Something Came To Me” make for a much better fit.

Just as Chance has changed over the years, so has the musical landscape around him. R&B has made a triumphant return; surprise albums are slowly becoming the norm; emcees are starting to revert back to truthful, poignant lyrics rather than bars filled with bragging and boasting. On Surf, Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment prove that they’ve done their market research, producing an album that utilizes all of these trends (and goes against many others) to create an experience that is somewhere between a Sunday Baptist church service, Herbie Hancock concert and poetry reading. Because of this, Surf will not be for everyone, but for those seeking a sense of spiritual upliftment and a relaxing summertime soundtrack, Surf is the wave you’ve been looking for.

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Everything You Know About the Stanford Prison Experiment Is Wrong

I n August 1971, at the tail end of summer break, the Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo recruited two dozen male college students for what was advertised as “a psychological study of prison life.” The basement of a university building was transformed into a makeshift prison. Some of the young men were assigned to be prisoners; the others became guards. The study turned dark almost immediately, as guards drunk on power mocked, humiliated, and cruelly punished their charges. Prisoners had breakdowns. Zimbardo had to shut down the study, which was supposed to run for two weeks, after just six days. While the experiment had been egregiously unethical, it did prove that circumstances have the power to make normal people act like tyrants—or what Zimbardo has called “the power of the situation.” 

So goes the legend of the Stanford Prison Experiment, cemented over more than half a century with lots of help from pop culture. Rocketed to fame when the Attica prison uprising dominated headlines just weeks after his study concluded, the media-savvy Zimbardo (who died in October) spent much of his career promoting the theory that putting good people in bad situations makes them do bad things. Abu Ghraib was, for obvious reasons, another big moment for him. When the acclaimed indie film The Stanford Prison Experiment hit theaters in 2015, starring Billy Crudup as Zimbardo and a pre- Succession Nicholas Braun as a subject, it joined a global canon of movies that reinforced his read on what happened in that Stanford hallway. The problem, as director Juliette Eisner demonstrates in her riveting Nat Geo documentary series The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth , is that Zimbardo’s account of the study was far from definitive. The conclusions he drew about our moral malleability may be more pop psychology than science.

Many of the short docuseries that proliferate on streaming play like features chopped into episodes for viewers who’d rather binge on TV than commit to a whole movie. But the three-part Unlocking the Truth , which premieres Nov. 13 (and will stream the following day on Hulu and Disney+), functions as a true triptych. Through new interviews with participants and clips of the so-called “Stanford County Prison,” the first episode provides a chronology of the experiment that is largely faithful to Zimbardo’s version. The second, titled “The Unraveling,” introduces Thibault Le Texier, a French researcher who has worked to debunk the experiment, and intersperses his insights with more participant interviews that complicate or outright contradict Zimbardo’s account. Twenty minutes into the episode—at what is roughly the midpoint of the series—onscreen text informs us that the prison clips we’ve been watching aren’t footage from the study but reenactments shot on a soundstage by Eisner's team, as “only a fraction of the experiment was filmed in 1971.” The finale pairs one of Zimbardo’s last-ever interviews with scenes of the real participants visiting the soundstage, advising the actors who portray them on what really happened and talking amongst themselves about the experience and its legacy.

A long history of Stanford Prison Experiment dissent

Psychologists have been critiquing the Stanford Prison Experiment for as long as it’s been part of the discourse, though their points have mostly failed to penetrate the public consciousness. Erich Fromm picked apart Zimbardo’s methods in his 1973 book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness , concluding that “ the difference between the mock prisoners and real prisoners is so great that it is virtually impossible to draw analogies from observation of the former.”

In 2002, the BBC aired a program called The Experiment , which documented British psychologists Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher’s restaging of the Stanford study . With an onsite ethical committee and the experimenters observing rather than participating (Zimbardo had acted as SCP’s superintendent), the prisoners wound up banding together and using their solidarity to extract better conditions. Haslam and Reicher have also noted that Zimbardo might’ve influenced guards’ behavior by making suggestions like this direct quote from a pre-experiment training session: “You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me… They can do nothing, say nothing, that we don't permit.” (There is, of course, the possibility that the presence of TV cameras affected the outcome of Haslam and Reicher's own experiment.)

Even the ad Zimbardo placed to recruit participants could have unwittingly influenced the behavior he observed. As Maria Konnikova described in a New Yorker essay that coincided with the 2015 film, psychologists Thomas Carnahan and Sam McFarland found , in 2007, that the presence of the words “prison life” in the ad likely narrowed the field of potential participants. When they ran their own experiment to see if they would receive different types of respondents by publishing the ad both as written and with the latter phrase omitted, Konnikova writes, they found that “those who thought that they would be participating in a prison study had significantly higher levels of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance, and they scored lower on measures of empathy and altruism.”

How Unlocking the Truth furthers the case against the Stanford Prison Experiment

Le Texier, who published his findings in an American Psychologist article and the book Investigating the Stanford Prison Experiment: History of a Lie , identified additional problems with the study by scrutinizing Zimbardo’s archives. In the series, he explains that not only did the professor hold a “Day 0” orientation for guards in which he encouraged them to make prisoners feel powerless; he also distributed documents to them including a list of rules and suggested daily schedule. Along with making choices for the guards that they were represented as having made on their own, Zimbardo’s extensive instructions made it unclear whether the guards should’ve seen themselves as subjects of the experiment or as confederates in running it.

But Le Texier is far from Eisner’s only source who breaks with Zimbardo. Doug Korpi, a prisoner who was sent home after what has been portrayed as an emotional breakdown, says he was really just acting out of frustration after discovering how tough it would be to get dismissed from what he viewed as a bad job. A guard named John Mark recalls the warden, a grad student of Zimbardo’s, taking him aside for a “pep talk” urging Mark to be tougher on inmates. Dave Eshleman, the notorious guard nicknamed “John Wayne” (not a compliment among college students of the era), has said before that he was an actor and saw the experiment as a role. Here, he also notes that he and other subjects perceived Zimbardo’s goal of indicting the carceral system, supported that aim, and thus behaved in a way that reflected that “we would’ve done anything to prove this prison system was an evil institution.” (Now, as Eisner shows us, the theatrical Eshleman plays in a British Invasion tribute band.)

Most remarkable, to my mind, is Eisner’s interview with a man, identified in Le Texier’s research, named Kent Cotter. “I’m the guy that you never heard about, that you should be hearing about,” he says. (Indeed, googling “Kent Cotter” with “Stanford Prison Experiment” before Unlocking the Truth ’s premiere yielded zero English-language results.) “Because I am the guy that quit.” Assigned to be a guard, Cotter showed up to the training session but was alienated by Zimbardo’s agenda, as well as by his fellow guards’ gleeful plans for tormenting prisoners. “I felt more and more isolated from that group,” he recalls. So he quit before the experiment even started. “This was set up for the guards to abuse, so how could it go any other way?”

Why Zimbardo’s interpretation has persisted for so long

In his American Psychologist paper , Le Texier identifies four reasons why the Stanford Prison Experiment has remained so influential, despite conspicuous flaws. Two explanations have to do with ongoing debates around situationism —the idea that circumstances, more than personality, drive human behavior—within the field of psychology. Le Texier also concludes that:

"The SPE survived for almost 50 years because no researcher has been through its archives. This was, I must say, one of the most puzzling facts that I discovered during my investigation. The experiment had been criticized by major figures ... yet no psychologist seems to have wanted to know what exactly the archives contained. Is it a lack of curiosity? Is it an excessive respect for the tenured professor of a prestigious university? Is it due to possible access restrictions imposed by Zimbardo? Is it because archival analyses are a time-consuming and work-intensive activity? Is it due to the belief that no archives had been kept?"

Finally, Le Texier acknowledges the tireless promotional efforts of the experiment’s mastermind; “in his desire to popularize his experiment,” he writes, “Zimbardo has very often made the SPE look more spectacular than it was in reality.” That’s putting it mildly. Unlocking the Truth shows clip after clip of Zimbardo flogging his findings , decades after the experiment was conducted: MSNBC , The Daily Show , a panel with the Dalai Lama, a TED Talk , etc. He shored up his legacy as the media’s favorite social psychology expert with books like 2007’s The Lucifer Effect , a best seller and APA William James Book Award winner that highlights connections between the Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib, and by hosting the 1990 PBS series Discovering Psychology . What’s the appeal of the message he’s pushing? From police brutality to genocide, “he has a very simple explanation to these very complex world events,” Le Texier says in the series.

It shouldn’t escape our notice, either, that Zimbardo was intimately involved with several previous onscreen representations of the experiment. He co-wrote and served as an executive producer of the 1992 documentary Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment . And the 2015 movie everyone liked so much? It’s based on The Lucifer Effect , and Zimbardo consulted on it.

What, if anything, did the Stanford Prison Experiment really prove?

Critics of Zimbardo’s work have put forth various theories as to what his experiment actually means. When you’re aware of the influence he and his aides exerted over the guards, the Stanford Prison Experiment can start to look like an exercise in confirmation bias . The BBC study, whose participants knew their conduct would be observed by a huge TV audience, might suggest that we should demand more transparency from the carceral system and similar institutions. In Unlocking the Truth , Stephen Scott-Bottoms, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Manchester University, speaks to the effect SPE has had on the public imagination when he calls it “the most influential piece of performance art of the 20th century.”

Particularly persuasive is an argument one of the BBC researchers makes in the series. “We began to realize that actually leadership was absolutely critical,” Reicher recalls. “Because the more you look at Zimbardo’s study, you realize that the guards didn’t become guards willy-nilly. He acted as leader to tell them what to do. But without leadership, you don’t get the types of toxic behavior we saw in Zimbardo’s SPE.” In other words: The situation to which Zimbardo attributed so much power is, in truth, only as powerful as the influence exerted by its leaders.

For me, the most crucial conclusion to draw from Unlocking the Truth and other research that has challenged the SPE is that people—some of them, at least— are capable of acting as individuals regardless of the situation. Even with Zimbardo’s encouragement, not every guard turned into a monster. Cotter didn’t even stick around long enough to don his uniform. And the ones who did abuse their power often had reasons for doing so besides the reservoir of evil Zimbardo felt sure was waiting within each impressionable human soul to be tapped. Contrary to the arguments he has made over the years (Zimbardo testified for the defense in the Abu Ghraib trial), maybe people should be held accountable for their behavior within institutional or otherwise hierarchical settings. As authoritarianism trends , it’s a takeaway worth remembering.

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New social experiment puts Dublin shoppers to the test

A new social experiment has shown that consumers can make better choices by refusing to pay more for the same product or service.

48 Mobile carried out the social experiment at Dundrum Town Centre.

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It consisted of two identical coffee trucks, one green and one red, both offering the exact same coffee menu.

Coffees were even served by identical twins Joe and Colin Whyte.

The only difference between the coffee trucks was the price.

The green truck sold its coffee for €1.29 while the red truck sold its coffee for €4.00.

93% of shoppers chose to purchase a coffee from the green truck for €1.29.

48 Mobile illustrated that common sense can prevail with shoppers refusing to pay more for the same product or service.

The network is currently offering unlimited 5G data, 5000 minutes and 5000 texts with no long contracts for as little as €12.99 per month.

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Vivek Ramaswamy’s ‘thought experiment’ on reducing govt size: 'Even social security number, you are in, odd you are out'

Vivek ramaswamy shares 'thought experiment' with lex fridman on reducing government size. "i guarantee you, not a thing would have changed for the ordinary american," he said..

• Updated Nov 13, 2024, 10:51 AM IST

Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been picked by US president-elect Donald Trump to run the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), along with billionaire Elon Musk, had earlier in September shared a “thought-experiment”, which if run on a large scale, would not only reduce the government by 75 per cent, but also avoid a bunch of discrimination lawsuits. 

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In an interview with American computer scientist and podcaster, Lex Fridman, Ramaswamy said, “In there on Day 1, anybody in the federal bureaucracy who's not elected, whose social security number ends in an odd number, you're out, if it ends in an even number, you are in. There’s a 50 per cent cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you're in, and if it starts with an odd number, you're out. That's a 75 per cent reduction."

“One of the virtues of that…it is a thought experiment, not a policy prescription…is that you don’t have a bunch of lawsuits dealing with gender or racial discrimination or political viewpoint discrimination. I guarantee you, do that on Day 1 and step two on Day 2. On Day 3, not a thing would have changed for the ordinary American, other than that their government being a lot smaller, spending a lot less money to operate it. And most people who run a company know this, it is 25 per cent of the people who do 80-90 per cent of the work. These government agencies are no different,” he said in the podcast. 

One of the best interviewers I’ve encountered. https://t.co/QHteXkASCS — Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) September 25, 2024

He then said: “Now imagine you could do that thought experiment and not just doing it at random but on a large scale with some metric of screening for those who actually have both the greatest competence as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the Constitution. That I think would immediately raise not only the civic character of the United States, it would also stimulate the economy. The regulatory state is like a wet blanket on the economy, most of it is unconstitutional."

TRUMP’S DOGE

His remarks have sparked a discussion in the light of the DOGE department that Trump indicated would operate outside the confines of the government. Trump said that Musk and Ramaswamy will together dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies. 

The new department would realise long-held Republican dreams and provide advice and guidance from outside of the government. Their roles would be informal and would not require Senate approval. DOGE would work with the White House and Office of Management & Budget. 

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My chemical romance might be teasing a new album.

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Inglewood, CA - October 11: My Chemical Romance lead vocalist Gerard Way performs at the Kia Forum ... [+] in Inglewood, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

After posting a cryptic teaser to social media, fans are speculating that the beloved emo rock outfit My Chemical Romance might be teasing a new album. This news comes off the heels of My Chemical Romance’s recent headlining performance at When We Were Young festival, where the band performed their hit album The Black Parade front-to-back.

MCR had broken up in 2013 but they reunited at the end 2019 and have been performing a handful of reunion shows throughout the last five years. The band has only released one new track since reuniting entitled, “The Foundations of Decay,” and fans have long speculated and hoped that the band is planning to record a new album soon.

MCR’s latest teaser might be the sign fans have been looking for. After a closer look at the mysterious Russian letters within the teaser, the letters translate to “TPK.” For longtime MCR fans there’s only one thing that “TPK” could indicate and that is MCR’s previously recorded and unreleased album, The Paper Kingdom .

The imagery shown in the teaser seems to also coincide with the the album title, as paper confetti and tall white buildings are showcased in the background of the teaser. Additionally, MCR posted the image with the following mysterious caption, “If you could be anything, what would you be?”. Comments on the post have been turned off.

At the moment there’s been no time or date specified for when MCR plan to make an official announcement. Initially, when the teaser post dropped, many fans were quick to speculate that it might be another ‘fake announcement,’ similar to when MCR’s Facebook page got hacked this past summer and was teasing unofficial announcements. However, unlike the Facebook hack, this recent teaser has been liked and shared by members of MCR which further indicates that it’s legitimate.

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While there’s plenty room for speculation as to what MCR is teasing, The Paper Kingdom seems to be the best guess so far. The unreleased album was initially recorded back in 2013 but was scrapped after the band broke up later that year. Vocalist Gerard Way spoke about the album in an interview in 2014, where he discussed what ultimately happed to the concept record.

“So that My Chem record that didn’t get made it was really, not only was it really dark […] I was basically finding anything else to do besides write music […] it’s like, I cared what the songs were, but like it’s gonna be a bunch of dark stuff and we’re going to build costumes and stage sets, and it’s going to be this storyline about a support group of parents who are dealing with the loss of their children so they make up this story about the children all being missing in the woods and fighting this witch and that was what it was about. It was called ‘The Paper Kingdom’. And there may be a time in my life where I want to do ‘The Paper Kingdom’. And maybe it’s a book, or maybe it’s something else.”

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