This American Life featured interviews with Tomoaki Hamatsu (the "contestant") and his producer recently: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episod

This American Life featured interviews with Tomoaki Hamatsu (the "contestant") and his producer recently: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/529/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/529/t... Their interviews provide additional details. Apparently the producers did feed him during the first two weeks, but only bread and water. Hamatsu did eventually have to eat dogfood. He was really forced to live naked, to the point where after the ordeal, clothes were itchy and uncomfortable, required a lot of readjusting. He was bullied into continuing when he wanted to quit. EDIT: If Milgrim or Zimbardo were getting started today, they wouldn't be able to do any of their early work at Universities, because of ethics panels that set strict guidelines covering human subject research. They couldn't do any of it on reality TV either, because there it would be far too tame.