Ted Audio Collective. how to be a better human. I'm your host Chris Duffy. Something that I've been thinking

about a lot and talking about with friends recently is this feeling that I have that I'm not the

same person that I used to be but I'm not quite sure who I'm not the same person that I used to be, but I'm not quite sure who I'm going to become,

that I'm kind of in-between versions of myself.

It's hard to put into words exactly what that feeling is, but I think a lot of us have this sense that so much has

happened in the broader world over the past few years. And also internally, there's been

all these changes and adaptations we've had to make and at least for myself I just feel like I'm not the same as I used to be

It's a hard thing to put into words exactly it's hard to articulate

That's why I was so happy when I came across this talk by Shankar Vedantam,

the journalist and host of Hidden Brain.

In his talk, he discusses exactly this feeling,

and as a metaphor and a jumping off point he uses the ship

of Theseus which is a famous thought experiment that asks whether if you replace all

the individual pieces of a ship whether that is still the same vessel or whether it's something else entirely.

Okay, here's a clip from Shankar's TED Talk where he's unpacking that question.

The people you were 10 years ago are not the people you are today.

Biologically, you have become a different person.

But I believe something much more profound happens

at a psychological level.

Because you could argue, a ship is not just a collection of planks,

a body is not just a collection of cells,

it's the organization of the planks that makes the ship.

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