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 Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas. 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 is more than what we see me.

One of the first things that I teach my biological psychology students is that there is a problem when we think about the mind and the brain as

being separate entities. Separating the mind from the brain is called a dualist perspective, where you

have these two elements. It's something, though, that takes a bit of time for people to understand

that it might be wrong. It's natural almost to think of

the mind and brain as separate things. I mean, I have a hard time myself, oftentimes, not thinking

about my thoughts and my tastes and my preferences as being tied to the biological organ inside my skull.

And then when I think of the essence of who I am, it's hard to tie that to just the sort of

biological meat of my body, even though I understand that all of my thoughts, feelings,

experiences, memories are etched into the

electrochemical circuitry of my brain. Why is it so hard for us to internalize that concept?

Well, this week's guest, Iris Barron, is going to answer just that. Our beliefs about how our brains work, about how our minds work

involve stories that we tell ourselves on a day-to-day basis to explain our own and others' behaviors.

And they shape our thinking about mental illness, free will, the afterlife. But as Eras Barrett points out, many of these stories are misguided.

We, she says, the storytellers, are blind.

Here's Berent, welcome to inquiring minds.

So nice to be with you, Andrea.

So I want to start by telling our listeners what these two kind of innate ideas, or sort of

I should say, I don't even know, native ideas.

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