Are you the captain of your soul, or just a passenger in a biological vehicle you didn't design?
In this mind-bending episode, we sit down with the legendary Stanford Professor Robert Sapolsky—the man who spent decades studying baboons in the wild and neurons in the lab only to reach a terrifyingly beautiful conclusion: Free will is a total myth. 🚫🕺
Think you chose to hit "play" on this episode? Think again. Sapolsky argues that your "choice" was actually decades, centuries, and even millennia in the making.
What’s inside this rabbit hole? 🐇🕳️
* The "Hangry" Judge: Did you know the single best predictor of whether a judge grants parole isn't the law, but how many hours it’s been since their last meal? 🥪⚖️ We dive into why low blood sugar might be the real reason for a "guilty" verdict.
* The Phineas Gage Mystery: How a three-foot iron rod through the brain turned a polite foreman into a foul-mouthed bully—and what that tells us about where your "personality" actually lives. 🏗️🧨
* The 25-Year Construction Site: Your frontal cortex—the part of the brain that's supposed to help you "do the right thing"—isn't fully wired until you’re 25. Who was in charge of the construction? (Hint: Not you). 🏗️🧠
* Distributed Causality: From the underwear you’re wearing today to the way your ancestors farmed rice 1,000 years ago, we’re tracing the "gazillion microscopic threads" that make you you. 🧵🌾
"We are biological machines that know we are machines." 🤖✨
Sapolsky doesn't just strip away our agency; he offers a radical new way to look at blame, praise, and justice. If there’s no free will, does "punishment" even make sense? Or should we treat dangerous behavior like a "broken brake" on a car? 🏎️🛠️
This isn't just a science lecture; it’s a manual for radical empathy. By the end of this conversation, you'll never look at a "bad" person—or yourself—the same way again.
Ready to have your reality rewritten? Tune in. (Or don't... but your biology probably already decided you would). 😉🎧