The Classroom Experiment That Became a Movement

In 1967, a Palo Alto history teacher tried to answer a question his students could not understand: how could ordinary people become part of something destructive? Ron Jones did not answer with a normal lecture. He built a classroom demonstration called The Third Wave — with discipline, slogans, a salute, membership cards, recruitment, and a fake rally. This episode looks at why the story still matters: not as a clean scientific experiment, but as a warning about belonging, identity, obedience, and the first steps that do not feel frightening enough. Sources / further reading: Ron Jones, “The Third Wave, 1967: an account” Palo Alto Online, “The Wave that changed the world” TheWaveHome.com participant/resource archive HistoryThatMatters tells strange-but-true stories from science, history, psychology, and human behavior. #HistoryThatMatters #TheThirdWave #History