You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Welcome to another episode of Inquiring Minds.

I'm Andrey Viscontas.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters.

There's more and why we see. One of the great mysteries of human behavior is to what

do emotions rule us. I mean, a lot of us like to think that

the kinds of decisions that we make that would benefit from a careful weighing of pros and cons,

well, these are rational decisions and they're not swayed by emotional states, but there's a wealth

of literature that suggests that that's not true. In fact, some people think that

our emotions govern all of our behavior, but that also doesn't seem true. And when you sit down

and think about it, what exactly is an emotion? Is it just the subjective feeling of feeling

sad or angry? Is it the behavior hitting someone or freezing or trying to run away? Is it the

physiology? So the increase in heart rate or change in respiration rate? Or is it the thought?

Of course, neuroscientists who study emotions have to figure out which aspect of emotion they're going to be focusing on.

And since we can't really study subjective feelings or even your innermost thoughts,

most of the work is limited to physiology and behavior. But what if that was really kind of

misguided? What if we're missing out on some of the most important

features of emotions? That's a question that Joseph Ladoo, who is a major giant in the neuroscience

of emotion, poses in his latest book, The Deep History of Ourselves, the Four Billion Year

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