Yuck! The Science of Disgust

March 9, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

🎙️ The Voices & The Context

The Format: This is a classic interview-style podcast episode. Host Shankar Vedantam guides the conversation with probing questions, while the guest provides expert analysis and personal anecdotes.
The Key Players:
- Host: Shankar Vedantam – The calm, curious, and insightful narrator of Hidden Brain.
- Guest: David Pizarro – A psychologist at Cornell University who studies the emotion of disgust. He is both an expert and a self-described "easily disgusted" person, making him the perfect guide.
The Vibe: Fascinating and a little gross. The tone is intellectually curious but often punctuated with moments of shared revulsion (like the story of chewed-up food). It’s educational, but the subject matter makes it feel like a thrilling, slightly dangerous conversation.

🗝️ Key Themes & Topics

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **🎙️ Introduction: David Pizarro**
2 (04:32) **What is Disgust?**
3 (05:04) **Case Study 1: The 1960 Nixon-Kennedy Debate**
4 (08:26) **Case Study 2: The "Eating Pets" Rumor (2024)**
5 (10:44) **Case Study 3: The "Diaper Don" Balloon**
6 (12:44) **The Biological Roots of Disgust**
7 (16:25) **Disgust as a Social Weapon**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Disgust is a strong emotion, one designed by evolution to protect us from danger and diseases. But disgust also spills into other areas of our lives, influencing our morals, our intuitions about right and wrong, even our politics. We talk with psychologist David Pizarro about how disgust is used to persuade and divide us, and why it remains such a potent force in public life today. Then, in our latest installment of “Your Questions Answered,” Huggy Rao returns to respond to listeners’ thoughts and questions about why big ideas fail.

There's still time to join Shankar at one of our upcoming stops on Hidden Brain's live tour! Join us in Philadelphia on March 21 or New York City on March 25. And stay tuned for more tour dates to be announced soon!

Illustration by Alvaro Montoro for Unsplash

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