Best of: We don’t just feel emotions. We make them.

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2021

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How do you feel right now? Excited to listen to your favorite podcast? Anxious about the state of American politics? Annoyed by my use of rhetorical questions? These questions seem pretty straightforward. But as my guest today, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, points out there is a lot more to emotion than meets the mind. Barrett is a superstar in her field. She’s a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and has received various prestigious awards for her pioneering research on emotion. Her most recent book How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain argues that emotions are not biologically hardwired into our brains but constructed by our minds. In other words, we don’t merely feel emotions — we actively create them. Barrett’s work has potentially radical implications. If we take her theory seriously, it follows that the ways we think about our daily emotional states, diagnose illnesses, interact with friends, raise our children, and experience reality all need some serious adjusting, if not complete rethinking. If you enjoyed this episode, you should check out: A mind-expanding conversation with Michael Pollan The cognitive cost of poverty (with Sendhil Mullainathan) Will Storr on why you are not yourself A mind-bending, reality-warping conversation with John Higgs Book recommendations: Naming the Mind by Kurt Danzinger The Island of Knowledge by Marcelo Gleiser The Accidental Species by Henry Gee Sense and Nonsense by Kevin L. Laland Credits: Producer and Editor - Jeff Geld Researcher - Roge Karma Recording engineer - Cynthia Gil Field engineer - Joseph Fridman The Ezra Klein Show is a production of the Vox Media Podcast Network Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Many of the things that feel given to us that just seem to exist separately from us don't.
0:07.3	We are active participants in making those things real.
0:22.9	Hello, welcome to the Clanchon, the Box Media Podcast Network.
0:25.7	Before we start today, I want to tell you about a new show that I am launching this weekend
0:29.5	called Impeachment Explained. Impeachment Explained, as you might guess, is about impeachment.
0:34.5	Not just the impeachment of Donald Trump, but in particular, the deeper issues that you need to
0:39.2	look at to understand the impeachment trial we are about to go through. What does high crimes
0:43.7	and misdemeanors mean? What has been going on through Ukraine? What does Rudy Giuliani's deal,
0:48.1	basically? The impeachment story has these multiple speeds, like one, the speed of all the new things
0:54.7	we're learning every day about what was going on in Italy and Australia and like, who is that guy
0:59.3	with the business called Fraud Guarantee and Mafia Rave? All that can be really overwhelming.
1:04.2	It can also overwhelm the ability to look into the iceberg of impeachment. The way partisan
1:11.1	polarization is changing it, the way the legal structure works. What an impeachment trial is actually
1:15.5	like. I wanted to launch this podcast to Critispace, both to catch up a bit on the news of the week,
1:20.7	but much more to dive into those things are going to shape the trial, shape how it plays out in
1:24.7	this country, but don't change. So don't get into the the daily news. That'll come out this Saturday.
1:30.8	You can subscribe to it now and I appreciate it if you did, but it'll begin coming out this Saturday
1:35.2	and go every week. If you're wondering why I didn't put it in this show, just start doing an extra
1:39.7	episode on impeachment, I think it's important actually to keep an eye off of the Trump show.
1:47.2	I think it's both important to watch it and also have spaces that it doesn't totally shape.
1:51.6	And so it felt like a good act of, I don't want to say resistance, but a good act of perspective.
1:58.8	It's on the one hand treat, hopefully treat impeachment seriously and take it on as one of
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