You 2.0: Cultivating Courage

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Media

Performing Arts, Social Sciences, Science, Arts

4.6 • 40.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why do some people act bravely in a crisis, while others flee or freeze up? Today, we bring you the second part of our You 2.0 series on the mental obstacles that can block us when we're charting a new path. Behavioral scientist Ranjay Gulati argues that courage is a choice, and that we can strengthen the reflexes that will help us to be brave when it matters most.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant.
0:03.2	In the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, one of the central characters is the cowardly line.
0:10.0	He cuts a figure that is recognizable to us all.
0:13.2	He longs to be brave, but when his courage is tested, he shrinks in fear.
0:18.7	Look at that. Look at that!
0:20.2	Oh! Oh!
0:22.6	I want to go home!
0:26.6	The cowardly lion eventually discovers his true nature.
0:29.6	When he is given a medal to honor his courage,
0:32.6	it helps him see that he is in fact a lion,
0:36.6	that he was brave all along.
0:41.7	The moral of the story is clear.
0:43.7	The lion always had the capacity to be brave.
0:47.0	He just didn't know it.
0:50.8	The Wizard of Oz is a work of fiction, but every day we see the cowardly lion's dilemma
0:55.6	entails from real life.
0:58.7	Situations where people are called upon to be brave.
1:01.6	Sometimes they rise to the occasion, but many fail to do so, often with disastrous
1:06.6	consequences. Fear, of course, is not always a bad thing.
1:14.5	Evolutionary biologists find that circuits in the brain that govern the fear response
1:18.6	are ancient.
1:19.8	But fear can keep us from living our best lives, reaching for our dreams, and upholding
	...

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