There's levers and gears and buttons underneath the surface that you have no idea.

Whatever somebody does, it's a function of how did they become who they are.

Every time we figure out, oh, there really wasn't free will in this domain.

It had nothing to do with it. This person had no control over that. Every time we do that, the world becomes a much better place.

So we all like to believe that we have free will. Like we have control over our choices and actions and lives like

we're the sole author of our decisions able to detect and avoid being

controlled or influenced or manipulated by either external or internal influences. influence or

influence or internal influences. And sometimes we can own the fact that, well, sure,

certain life circumstances or histories

that we have little control over,

they play into our choices but still it's mostly

us at the wheel right well my guest today Robert Sapolsky has a perspective that

may just shatter that notion entirely.

It kind of melted my brain to be honest,

and while I didn't want it to be true in the beginning,

by the end of this conversation,

I looked at myself and the world

and the whole notion of free will and how it plays into our ability to live good lives just entirely differently.

Robert is a professor of biology and don't get ulcers, behave, and his latest groundbreaking work that sparked this conversation

determined a science of life without free will.

Now in that book and in this conversation, he argues that free will is not just largely but

Completely an illusion that our choices and behaviors are shaped by factors beyond our control things like our genes our neural wiring

...