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Podcast: Novara Media
Episode: Novara FM: When Does A Crowd Become A Mob? w/ Dan Hancox
Description: The English language is full of pejoratives for large groups of people: mob mentality. Herd behaviour. Crowd contagion.
Much of this apprehension stems from one of the most influential works of psychology ever written, Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Unfortunately, Le Bon’s big idea – that crowds produce derangement and violence in even the most rational subject – was not based on any actual research.
So why the lingering suspicion? In his new book, Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World, journalist and author Dan Hancox traces our fear and attr...