The Childhood of Dictators
How the childhood environments and brain development of history's most notorious figures shaped their future actions.
About this video
How the childhood environments and brain development of history's most notorious figures shaped their future actions.
Full transcript of The Childhood of Dictators
The most feared dictator in history spent his childhood singing hymns in a church choir. Long before Joseph Stalin ruled, he was a devout boy studying theology. In Austria, a rejected teenaged painter slept in a homeless shelter, his mind warping under extreme stress. Across the ocean, young Franklin Roosevelt wore lace dresses, sheltered from the cold world. And a young Fidel Castro threatened to burn his boarding school to the ground. The monsters of history weren't born in darkness; their brains were shaped by early childhood survival.