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Invisibilia

The Personality Myth

Invisibilia

NPR

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Social Sciences, Science

4.522.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2016

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In America personality is often seen as destiny. Whether you're a famous CEO like Steve Jobs or a serial criminal like Hannibal Lecter, most of us think that our position in life has a lot to do with our personality. This episode looks more closely at this belief. We start at a Court House where lines of people who are getting married describe the personality of the person with whom they are to be joined for life. Then travel to a prison in Ohio where a woman has struck up a work relationship with a prisoner who it turns out did something far worse than she imagined. Finally Lulu talks to a scientist to come up with a complete catalogue of all the things about us that actually do stay stable over the course of our lives. They look at everything from cells to memories until ultimately they come up with a list — but it's a really short list.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everybody, it's Elise here.

0:01.3

Before we get started, I just wanted to tell you

0:03.0

about these cool coloring pages that we have

0:05.7

for each of our episodes so that you can color

0:07.9

as you listen, little something to do.

0:10.5

They are very beautiful.

0:11.8

And if you want us to email them to you

0:13.9

ahead of time each week so that you can be ready

0:16.1

for coloring adventures, sign up for our newsletter

0:18.9

at npr.org slash invisibility newsletter.

0:23.4

The newsletter also has lots of other great stuff.

0:25.6

You might like including bonus content

0:27.7

and information about our music

0:29.5

and links to things that we reference in each episode.

0:32.8

You can sign up again at npr.org slash invisibility newsletter.

0:37.9

There are April showers, there are May flowers,

0:47.8

and then there's June, wedding season.

0:50.8

OK, standing outside of the Superior Court in DC,

0:55.9

looking for people who are about to get married.

0:59.9

You can just get a marriage license, did you?

1:01.9

If you're looking to a cost unsuspecting couples

1:04.2

who are in the process of uniting themselves

...

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