This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the fall of 1999, a new film debuted in just 25

theaters across the United States. Its name was Being John Malkovich. The premise was outlandish.

A down on his luck puppeteer named Craig finds small, hidden door at the office where he works.

When he crawls inside, he goes through a strange portal

and ends up inside the mind of the actor John Malkovich.

For 15 minutes or so, he gets to inhabit the actor's body

before being spit out on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.

Things only get more wacky from there. Craig and a co-worker start charging people to go through

the portal, and soon, plenty of people have had the experience of being John Malkovich.

When John Malkovich, the real John Malkovich, inevitably learns about this, he is determined

to go through the portal himself.

When he does so, he enters a world where everyone has his face and can only say one word.

The movie is thought-provoking and has long been one of my favorites.

That might be because it is a metaphor for a central idea that we explore on this show.

We like to think that we are in charge of our own minds.

We decide what we are going to think and what we are going to do. We decide what to cook for dinner, where to go on vacation, and whom to marry.

But it turns out that there are a vast number of unconscious mental processes that direct much

of how we think and act.

Often, we are unaware of these hidden puppeteers.

They make us say and do things that we haven't consciously chosen ourselves.

Sadly, there's no way to spit these puppeteers out on the side of the New Jersey turnpike. It's my head, Schwartz! It's my head!

This week on Hidden Brain, why our minds often conspire against our best interests

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