Hello everyone, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll.

And let's say that you're faced with a difficult decision to make.

Let's say you're wondering whether you should, you know, watch a basketball game on TV

or listen to an old episode of the Mindscape Podcast.

And you think about it, you weigh the different factors, you come to a decision.

And then someone asks you, why did you make the decision that you made?

And you would offer some explanation, some reason.

You know, I want this, I value that, and I made the decision based on these calculations.

So today's guest, Robert Sapolsky, is here to tell you that you're wrong.

No matter what, you gave as explanations almost no matter what.

I mean, maybe you're exactly right, but more likely you have simplified things and rationalized quite a bit.

Robert Sapolsky is a neuroscientist, a neuroendocrinologist.

I believe is the technical term.

Also studies other aspects of biology, psychology, anthropology, primatology.

And there's a very well-known researcher in the field of human and broader primate behavior.

The author of a book, just a couple years ago, called Behave, the Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.

And the thing that he tackles in this book, it's one of those books, every single reviewer,

refers to it as Magisterial, which is a way of saying that it's both long and good.

And the topic that he tackles is, why do we behave in the ways that we do?

And in particular, why do we make the decisions that lead us to behave in the ways that we do?

And his thesis, more or less, is that there's no one answer to that question.

There's no single thing that explains why we do.

...