Episode Details

B.F. Skinner trained pigeons to guide missiles during World War II, raised his daughter in a climate-controlled box that the press called a "baby cage," and argued that free will is an illusion and all human behavior is shaped by reinforcement. He was the most influential and most controversial psychologist of the twentieth century — a man whose ideas about conditioning shaped everything from education to advertising while provoking accusations that he wanted to reduce humanity to trained animals.

This episode traces Skinner from his small-town Pennsylvania childhood through the pigeon experiments, the Skinner Box, the utopian novel Walden Two, and the philosophical firestorm over whether human freedom is real or just a comfortable story we tell ourselves.

• The pigeon-guided missile project — Skinner's wartime attempt to train birds as living guidance systems
• The Skinner Box, operant conditioning, and the radical behaviorist program
• The "baby tender" controversy and the urban legend that his daughter was psychologically damaged
• Beyond Freedom and Dignity and the philosophical debate over free will that defined his legacy