Something You Should Know - Why Success is Never Quite Good Enough & How Evolution Gave Us Free Will - SYSK Choice

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

Texting and email may be convenient, but sometimes a phone call is the best way to make a real connection. So how do you ensure the person actually calls you back? I’ll reveal a few clever tricks �� backed by communication science — that can dramatically increase your chances. Source: Bill Jensen, author of Simplicity Survival Handbook (https://amzn.to/3MMDmt7) Have you ever achieved something big… only to feel restless right after? That’s the strange emotional hangover of success — what my guest Laura Gassner Otting calls Wonderhell. It’s that moment when your achievement opens the door to an even bigger dream — and with it, pressure, doubt, and possibility. Laura, frequent guest on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Harvard Business Review, joins me to unpack this fascinating space between accomplishment and ambition from her book Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn’t Feel Like It Should and What to Do About It (https://amzn.to/40EycFi). Do we truly have free will — or are all our choices predetermined by biology and circumstance? Some scientists say free will is an illusion. Others, like Kevin Mitchell, argue that evolution gave us control over our decisions. Kevin, associate professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin and author of Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (https://amzn.to/49vncy2), joins me to explore what neuroscience, genetics, and philosophy reveal about human choice — and why it matters for everything from morality to justice. (For the counterargument, check out my earlier conversation with Robert Sapolsky: https://www.somethingyoushouldknow.net/566-do-we-really-have-free-will-how-to-handle-rejection-better/) And finally — you’ve probably heard people say, “That’s a whole nother story.” But is nother even a real word? The answer is surprisingly nuanced. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/whole-nother PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince.  Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! DELL: It’s time for Black Friday at Dell Technologies. Save big on PCs like the Dell 16 Plus featuring Intel® Core™ Ultra processors. Shop now at: ⁠⁠⁠ https://Dell.com/deals ⁠⁠⁠ NOTION: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works . It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use! Try Notion, now with Notion Agent, at: ⁠⁠⁠https://notion.com/something⁠⁠⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative, this… is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Today on something you should know, when you need to get a hold of someone on the phone, how do you make sure they call you back? Then some interesting insight into how success works that can make you more successful. My favorite quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is we would worry much less about what people thought of us if we realized how seldomly they did. So that's the first thing that we should remember is that nobody's actually paying attention to us. You have so many chances to fail without anybody noticing before you actually become that overnight success. Also, you know the phrase, a whole another story? Is another really a word? And free will. Do you

make your own decisions? Are you responsible for your actions? Some people believe not. If it can't be said that you really made a decision, then how could you be held responsible for it? That's the payoff. That's where this cash is out. And it's not just in the legal system. It's in our entire social system. All this today on Something You Should Know. I want to tell you about a great new podcast I think you'll like. I'm loving it. So what happens when our passions become obsessions? Well, on David Green is obsessed, one of America's most familiar voices and longtime co-host of NPR's Morning Edition seeks out obsessives of all kinds while unpacking his own fixations. You'll hear David talk to

comedian Tignitaro about her complex passion for plant-based food. Actor David Arquette on his love of Bozo the Clown. Paula Poundstone on her house full of cats. Celebrity chef and author Michael Simon discusses why he just can't quit the Cleveland Browns even though they often make him miserable and so much more. It's pop psychology disguised as conversations with the world's most fascinating people. You can listen to David Green is obsessed wherever you get podcasts.

Something You Should Know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know, with Mike Carruthers. Hi, and thank you for listening. A quick thing as we get started today, we recently learned that there was a change in our hosting platform some glitch, I'm not really sure. It caused many listeners to stop seeing our episodes. If you're hearing this, you see our episodes, and you could help us recover from this.

All you have to do is press follow on the player you're listening on and play any recent episode after you listen to this one. And it would genuinely make a big difference. So just hit follow and enjoy one additional episode to help us over this little hump. That's it. First up today, what is your preferred method of communication? Email, text.

Well, as handy as those are, sometimes the telephone is an essential and sometimes better way when you need to clearly get your point across and when you have to make sure that you really get a hold of the person and that they received your message. And when you do use the phone, and you have to leave a voicemail, how do you improve your chances of actually getting a callback. Well, there's a bit of a science to it, according to Bill Jensen, author of a book called Simplicity Survival Handbook. First of all, you should assume that anything you say after the first 30 seconds will never

be heard, because people just, they won't listen. Also, the longer the message you leave, the less urgent it becomes to the person listening. Ideally, a voicemail message should be no longer than 15 seconds and have a single message and request a single action. Even better if your message includes these three points. This is the one thing I want you to know. Here's how this is going to feel when you're done, and here is the one thing I would like you to do.

If you can get those three things into three quick sentences under 15 seconds, you'll have an impact. And that is something you should know. There is something we humans tend to do when we accomplish a goal. And that is, after we congratulate ourselves on a job well done, we start to think, hmm, if I did that, what else could I do? Maybe I could do something better, something bigger.

It's that idea of success breeds more success. And the place in your brain where that happens has been labeled wonder hell by my next guest. Laura Gassner-Odding is a frequent contributor to Good Morning America, the Today Show, the Harvard Business Review, and she's author of a book called Wonder Hell, Why Success Doesn't Feel Like It Should and What to Do About it. Hi, Laura, welcome to something you should know. Well, hey, Mike, it's great to be here. So explain this Wonder Hell thing in a little more depth than I just did because it's really an interesting concept. Wonder Hell is the space in your psyche where the burden of your potential lives.

Now, have you ever had one of those moments where you experienced something, you accomplish something that you didn't quite know you could accomplish? And you're like, wow, that was amazing. It was exciting. It was humbling. It was wonderful. I did it. And then in that moment, you're like, well, if I could do that, what else could I do?

And suddenly, you're filled with this new goal that you didn't even know existed for you last week, last month, last year. And it comes with some imposter syndrome and some uncertainty and some doubt and some stress and some exhaustion and some envy and some burnout. And you're like, this is amazing and it's humbling and it's wonderful. But it's also kind of hell. It's kind of wonder hell. And wonder hell, as I said, is the space in your psyche where the burden of your potential walks in and goes, so what are you going to do now? Right? It's like if you're hiking up a mountain, like you're at the bottom of the mountain and you look at the top of the mountain range you're like, I want to go there.

But then when you're like halfway up the mountain, there's like a little sign for a scenic overlook and you look out, you know, you walk over to look out. And what do you see? You see the top of your mountain. But beyond it, you see the top of like 10 other mountains that you couldn't even see from the bottom. And suddenly you're like, I actually want to go there. And so I think Wonder Hell is a pretty cool place because Wonder Hell is that space when we

figure out what we're actually really made of and what we actually really want. Well, that thought process of, look what I've done, what else could I do? That just seems like it's human nature and in fact is a driver to success. I think it is. And I don't mean this in this like bigger, better, faster, hustle harder, bro, you know? I don't mean it in this like hustle porn kind of way, this like success industrial complex that's always saying like you got to keep growing and striving. Like Wonder Hell is made up of three different, like the whole book is designed like an amusement park and it's made up of three different towns. The first is Imposter Town, the second is Dautsville, and the third is Burnout City.

And so I spent a third of the book actually talking about this question of maybe it's okay not to go. Maybe it's okay to stay where you are right now. But I think facing that question of, you know, we are human beings that have survived this long because we continue to evolve and to iterate and to innovate and to change. And so that internal striving nature is so much like, ingrained into our DNA. So, you know, we're all going to be facing those issues. And when I was in it, when my last book, Limitless, debuted, I had no platform. I didn't know anybody. I didn't even understand how book publishing worked. And the book debuted as a Washington Post bestseller.

Number two, right behind Michelle Obama. And I was like, that's amazing. And also, how do I get to be number one? It was like the thought that went through my brain. And it wouldn't have been a thought that would go through my brain normally, except I was so exhausted by the work that went into the book launch that the part of my brain that dictates my humility was just not there. And so I heard this voice going like, it could be you, right? Like, you could have more. You could be bigger. And in that moment, I wondered what it would feel like. And so Wonder Hell was really born out of me finding myself in Wonder Hell and then saying, you know, given that I am a professional keynote speaker and I spend my time in the green room before I go on stage with a lot of super cool

interesting people who have done a lot of super cool interesting things. I'm going to talk to them about how they got through it. And so I talked to a hundred different glass ceiling shatters, Olympic medalists, startup unicorns. And I was like, hey man, how'd you do it? How'd you get through it? And what I learned both liberated and horrified me, which is that you don't. You just learn how to get comfortable being uncomfortable in this space in between who you were and who you are now becoming and so what is your advice message what what is it you want people to take away from this what what is the given that that's happening now what so the first thing i want people i want to do three things okay the first thing i want them to do is i want them to embrace this ambition so when you

hear that voice inside of your head going maybe you right like what if it could be you why not you i want us all to embrace that and not say no no no it's not for me but to be like, hmm, maybe it could be me. When I was an executive search, so I found, you know, CEO, C-suite people for, you know, huge organizations all around the world, for 20 years I did this. And there would always be internal candidates, so people who were currently employed at the organization who wanted the job. And what would happen is sometimes they would get it and sometimes they wouldn't. But the very process of dressing up for the interview and thinking in the voice of that role and speaking in the voice of that role and answering questions in the voice of that role

made them see themselves in that role. And once they did, they couldn't unsee it. So once they embraced this ambition, they always ended up leaving the organization within a year because suddenly they wanted that role. They saw themselves there. So I want us to be able to embrace our ambition and be like, it's okay if I want this thing that I didn't even know was a goal of mine before. I'm going to embrace that ambition. The second thing is I want us to renegotiate our relationship with these emotions. So we hear all these uncertainty and doubt and imposter syndrome and all of these all the voices inside of our own head and also all the voices from outside of our head, right? Like our friends and our family and all the people are like, oh my God, you can't do that.

That's too scary. And what they really mean is, oh, my God, I can't do that. I'm too scared. We hear all those things and they become these little cancers in our brain. So as soon as it gets hard, we start saying, oh, I guess maybe it's not for me after all. I want us to renegotiate our relationship with those emotions and say, these aren't limitations, but they're invitations. It's not that I can't do it. It's just that I haven't done it yet. I don't know how to do it yet, but I knew how to do everything to get me to this point, which, you know, argues that I can probably learn how to do the things to get me to the next point, even though I don't know how to do it yet. So the second piece is to renegotiate our relationship with these emotions so that they're not limitations,

but invitations. And then third and finally, I want us to get really comfortable being uncomfortable because what I learned from all the people to whom I spoke was that on the other side of this wonder hell was just the next one and the next one if they were lucky the next one after that so we don't say like oh I just need to get through this one stomach churning butt clenching fight or flight moment this one stressful thing as soon as I get to you know turn in the report or get the promotion or you know get the get the prize everything will be fine it's not because in the other side if there's just other things that may be interesting So it's not about surviving these moments, but learning that being uncomfortable is also

part of thriving in these moments too. And so going back to the people in the organization that you would interview that were from within the organization and they didn't get the job so they left, did you ever follow up and find out that that was a good thing to do, that that was a smart decision to make, that they succeeded or were they in over their head or what or what you know what's really funny i cite the study in wonder hell that if you are struggling with the decision should i get married should i sell the house should i leave the job right you're struggling with some big decision and you flip a coin heads i do it tails i don't they have done studies that show that people who got heads do it are

happier not just immediately, not just six months later, but years into the future than the ones who got the coin that said don't do anything at all. So why is that? Even if they said they'd made the wrong decision, they still were happier long term because what they said is that even if that decision wasn't the right one, I learned things about myself. I'm in a place that I might not have been otherwise. For the most part, I learned, I grew, I met other people, I had other opportunities that wouldn't have appeared if that hadn't happened. And so what I think is really interesting about that is action beat stagnation. And so even for the people who might have gone to a job where they found themselves in over their heads, they also learned things about themselves and grew and were challenged

in different ways. So long term, they said, you know what, that might have been really hard and maybe it was the wrong decision immediately. But long term, yeah, it was actually the right decision because here's where I am today because of it. Well, that's interesting. Well, and I imagine, too, that the people who didn't do anything regretted not doing anything and always wondered what if they had? You know, that's what they say. There's a brawny, Bronny Ware, who was a nurse, I think in Australia, who her job was to administer to people in, you know, the end of life situations, people who had gone to hospice. And the number one regret of the dying was I wish that I had the courage to live the life I really wanted to live. And so I think living with regret

is far scarier to me than living with failure because we've all survived every one of our failure so far, right? Like, we've all survived our worst days. We're here. So it's, I think the haunt of regret, to me, personally, is worse than the failure. Because, you know, there's, here's a great quote by Quincy Jones who said, I don't have problems. I have puzzles. And that, that mindset is so, it's so resilient because, like, if you think about it, like, you know, a problem is something that you're, you're strapped with. It's, it's there. There's nothing you can do about it, but a puzzle, you can solve it, you can figure it out, like you can look for solutions. There's always lots of different ways to solve a puzzle. And so I would

rather have, you know, puzzles than have regret. We're talking about success, personal success with Laura Gassner Otting. She's author of a book called Wonder Hell, why success doesn't feel like it should and what to do about it. When you're flying Emirates business class, sampling our range of vintage wines from the largest selection in the skies. You'll see that your vacation isn't really over until your flight is over. Fly Emirates, fly better.

This Giving Tuesday, Cam H is counting on your support. Together, we can forge a better path for mental health by creating a future where Canadians can get the help they need when they need it, no matter who or where they are. From November 25th to December 2nd, your donation will be doubled. That means every dollar goes twice as far to help build a future

where no one's seeking help is left behind. Donate today at camh.ca.ca slash giving Tuesday. So Laura, it seems like maybe you could take this success thing too far and being a recruiter as you were that you know oftentimes people will apply for jobs and they have absolutely no qualifications, but they're just like reaching for the stars and trying things, and they're really wasting everybody's time, including their own.

But I'm ambitious. I'll do anything. So there have to be some parameters around this. Well, sure. Well, let me preface this to say, for the most part, women don't do that. Women have to be asked seven different times to apply for something before they'll even maybe consider thinking about whether or not they could remotely be qualified. men don't have to be asked more than once, even sometimes once.

And that's not to be anti-man. I love men. I'm married to a man. I've got two sons. Like, men are great. But in my experience, I found that for the most part, I had to beg women who were like 98% qualified to apply for something. And they're like, yeah, but I don't have this other 2%.

And men would say, well, I've got 50% and I'll learn the rest on the job. And so I think there's a difference between competence and confidence. Men have confidence and women look for competent. I also saw recruiting committees give men a much longer leash in terms of like, well, he's confident. He can do it. I believe him. Whereas the women are like, well, is she confident? Has she done it? And so, you know, if we're hiring for promise versus track record, those are very different things. And I think as we're trying to expand the tent and make sure that all leadership doesn't look homogenous, we have to make sure that we're helping people to understand that sometimes we actually are recruiting people on,

you know, looking at their promise, not just their, their prolog. So I don't think in 20 years of doing executive search, in 20 years of recruiting, I ever saw a perfect candidate, somebody who had every single possible qualifications. And frankly, I never ever wanted or want to do a job for which I have every single possible qualification, because that's boring. It means I've done it already. So I don't know that we can get in trouble for applying for things that we don't have qualifications for. I think we can get in trouble for applying for things that we don't have qualifications for and no plan to figure out how to get qualifications for them.

And that plan can be taking courses, having a mentor, making sure that we've got some on-the-job training. I mean, listening to podcasts like this, you know, watching TED Talks or reading books. There's so many ways to learn and to get the skill set. But, you know, not everybody has it. And speaking of that, there's a woman by the name of Carrie Loren, she's the first F-14 female F-14 fighter pilot in a U.S. Navy. And she said to me one time, when you were landing a $2 billion piece of, you know, whatever, the $50 billion piece of equipment on this tiny postage stamp

in the middle of a rollicking ocean, the average age of the sailor on that ship who is going to make sure that you don't die when your plane lands is 19 years old. 19 is the average age of the sailor on that ship. So they don't have 10,000 hours, right? Like, they don't have expertise. When you get up on that plane the first time, you don't have 10,000 hours. So none of us ever have qualifications for all the things we want to do, but we should think about creating a plan to get the qualifications,

because that's actually much more compelling. Oftentimes, though, it seems that people are ambitious, I want to do this, I want to do that. And then they get a taste of it and think, you know, this isn't really what I thought this was going to be. This is not. And what happens then? Does that kill your ambition or did you make a mistake or do you just need to redirect or what? Well, I think a lot of us underestimate the actual work that it's going to take to pull off some of these things. And some of that is because we look around at social media and we see a lot of overnight successes. And what we don't see

are the hours and the days and the weeks and the months and the years of dark work, right? The work that these people do in the dark when nobody can see the like super unattractive, super unglamorous work. So I think some of us underestimate it. I have a lot of young people and, you know, older people too, but mostly young people who come to me and they tell me these like big, hairy, scary dreams, these goals that they have. And I can tell you I know exactly who's going to pull them off and who's not. And here's how. The ones who when they tell me their goals, they kind of like lower their voice a little bit. They slow down a little bit. Their body language changes. It's like they revere their goals so much because they understand how

hard they're going to be to reach them, that they understand the work that they can't even say them in like a full-throated voice. Like those are the ones I know. Like they know what it's going to take. So yeah, look, I mean, if you set a goal and you decide that it's too ambitious, you turn around. You do something else. Like none of us, none of us go to cocktail parties and tell stories about like the time we set this huge goal and it was an absolute success from the very start. Like that doesn't make you a very interesting party guest, right? Like we tell the story about when we fell flat on our face when everything was horrible, when we thought everything was lost and then we rose up from the ashes and things were amazing,

right? The hero's journey. That's what makes us interesting. And I don't know, again, in 20 years of doing search, I think the most interesting people, actually, let me rephrase that. The only interesting people I spoke to were the ones who made left turns and right turns and U-turns because that's how they learned who they are. That's how they learned about, you know, what they really wanted and what they'd really be willing to work for. So I think it's okay if we walk partway into a door and we're like, you know, this one isn't for me.

We turn around. We go back into the room. There's other doors. It's okay. Life is long. Do you think that whatever this is, this wonder hell substance that, you know, pushes you forward and pushes you to strive for more. Is it like a currency that you spend and you eventually run out?

Like it takes a toll on you and then, you know, enough is enough or not? I actually think it's the opposite. Based on the people to whom I spoke, again, 100 glass ceiling shatters, Olympic medalists, startup unicorns, and everyday people like us, what I learned is that every time they discovered something inside of them, a new gear, a new speed, a new, a new speed, a new unicorns. want, it actually fed them. So people say, if you can dream it, you can do it. And I think that's kind of nonsense because I could dream that I could run a marathon all day long, but if I've never

run a mile, that's not going to happen. Right. And I know this firsthand because I woke up one day and I turned 39 years old and had a midlife crisis and tried to run a mile and I couldn't. I'd never run a mile in my life. And it took me six weeks to actually run that first mile. And at the end of the first mile, I was all filled up on endorphins. And I was like, if I string three of those together, maybe I could do a 5K. And six weeks later, I did my first 5K and I say did not ran because it wasn't pretty. And at the end of that, I was like, if I string two of those together, I could do a 10K. Fast forward 10 years and I'm just finished my sixth marathon. But if I'd woken up on that first day and said, I'm going to dream, I can run a marathon. I would run a

mile. It would take me a long time. It would be really hard. I'd eventually quit. But each time I did it, that allowed space of my brain to dream even bigger. And so I think it's not if you can dream it, you can do it. It's if you do it, you can dream it. And so I think each successive trip into wonder hell is just showing us that competence. Because again, we talked about confidence and competence. I think confidence, true confidence comes from competence. You show yourself you can do something. And then once you do that thing, you're like, oh, I can do that thing and maybe more. And then when you do the maybe more, you're like, and maybe I could do it this way and that way. And so I think confidence is a muscle and we train it. And each time we do it, we build,

the ability to learn, to grow our network, to take more chances, to understand problems versus puzzles, and all of these things, all of these things come with us through experience. Well, the chances are that as you do that, you're going to have failures, that you're not going to get everything you hope to get. And does that, and how do you deal with that? Because it seems like that would take a toll as well, that, oh, man, I just got punched in the teeth there, you know, maybe I'm getting a little gun-shy. Yeah, I think that, you know, I like to say that failure is not finale. It's fulcrum.

It's the place from which we grow and we change and we iterate and we innovate. And so my favorite quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is we would worry much less about what people thought of us if we realized how seldomly they did. So that's the first thing that we should remember is that nobody's actually paying attention to us. Nobody cares. You have so many chances to fail in private without anybody noticing before you actually become that overnight success on social media. The people who I spoke to who were able to thrive in wonder hell, they understood that every failure was just an opportunity to

learn and grow. And in fact, going back to the study that I mentioned about making yourself luckier, lucky people also saw failure as an opportunity for learning. So they didn't define it as the end, they just defined it as the middle. Like if you're not the hero of your story yet, you're just not at the end of your story. Like that's just how it works. Or maybe you're in the wrong story. You need to pursue something else. But the failure teaches you that lesson. So the failure teaches you, A, what you're good at and what you're not good at, where you need to grow. Like I never, I never helped my kids with their homework because I felt like if my kids turn imperfect homework, then the teachers don't know what they don't know. And then how are

they going to be able to teach them? Right. Like my kids should fail some things. They should learn. that's that's part of it so but it also teaches you what you're willing to work for like they people say follow your passion and I think that's like the worst advice ever because follow your passion says you just got to find your passion and you follow it and everything's going to be perfect which leaves no room for failure the minute things get hard the minute someone says no the minute you get punched in the teeth right the minute your favorite client turns you down and your worst staff member stays forever like you're going to be like well I guess this must not be my passion, I should leave. But I think we should be passionate about what we do, but I think

we should also understand that our passion isn't just demanding us to follow it. Like we have to invest in it. We have to learn. We have to grow. Things have to be hard. You know, tell me what you would do if you knew you couldn't fail. That's your passion. And I say, no, tell me what you would do if you knew for sure you would fail. And yet you would do it over and over and over and over until you got it right. That's your passion. So I think, not only do I think failure has a place in wonder hell and that it's possible, I think it's probable. And then if we don't get comfortable understanding how to handle failure, then our story ends. Well, this is such an interesting and different way of looking at success and motivation. I really like this. I've been speaking

with Laura Gassner Otting. She is author of a book called Wonder Hell, why success doesn't feel like it should and what to do about it. And you can find a link to that book at Amazon in the note. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on here, Laura. Thank you so much, Mike. Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for $5.

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Do you have free will? Do you really control what you do, or is it all been predetermined? For most people, for me anyway, it's my experience that I choose what I do. It may not always be the right choice, but I choose what I do. As the saying goes,

I'm responsible for my actions, and so are you. But there is this whole other belief system held by some that we do not have free will. And if that's true, well, then what does control our actions if it's not us? If you'd like to hear the argument for that, episode 566 of this podcast, has a fascinating interview with Robert Sapolsky, who makes the case that there is no free will.

and consequently, for example, we shouldn't punish criminals because whatever they did was not their choice. I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. It's a really interesting argument to listen to. But on the other side of the issue is Kevin Mitchell. Kevin believes that the evidence is pretty convincing that we do make our own choices. Kevin is an associate professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College in Dublin, and he's author of a book called Free Agents, How Evolution Gave Us Free Will.

Hi, Kevin, welcome to something you should know. Oh, thanks very much, Mike. Thanks a lot for having me. So the idea of free will, I really want to understand why people are arguing and disagreeing about this because it seems so obvious to most of us, I think, that we choose what we choose.

I mean, I would have a hard time making the case that I don't have free will. I agree. And to me, it's absolutely the bedrock of our everyday experience is that we make choices. We decide what to do. We think about what to do. We talk about what people are doing and why and so on. And that just seems to be how we spend our time and how we get around in the world. And it does seem odd to say that that's just an illusion. But there are a few sort of things that push people in that direction. One is to say, well, okay, maybe I'm making choices and I can do what I want, but can I really want what I want? Can I decide what to want? That seems to be a stumbling block for some people, although I don't think it should be. But the argument there is that, you know, maybe right now my choices are determined in some way by the way my brain is configured. And that has to do with my genetics and the way my brain developed and the way I was brought up and different experiences that have,

have happened to me. So how free am I really? Maybe I'm just acting out my programming. Right. So that's the theory that you do what you do based on your past and your genetics and you are basically programmed to do what you do and you have no control. But isn't there another argument that the universe is already programmed, that the atoms and the molecules of everything, everywhere, all of that is going to do what it does and nobody can. can alter that. And so we're just, you know, in that kind of a deterministic universe, there's no doings at all, whether you will them or not.

There's just things that are going to happen and they always were going to happen. So those are the kinds of concerns that lead people to think that maybe free will is just an illusion. So I mentioned at the beginning here that I interviewed and spoken with Robert Sapolsky, who is probably one of the leading flag bearers of the we don't have free will argument. And it's maddening to talk to him, and he admits it. He says, I know it drives people crazy to listen to listen to me. But I said, you know, I understand these arguments that all this stuff is determined. I get all that.

But there's a difference between all these things having an influence on you and all these things dictating what you do next. There's a huge gap there between those two things. Well, I completely agree with you and I completely disagree with Robert with respect to him. He sees all those prior influences as completely determinative. That is, there's no room when you look at all of them together for, you to be doing anything in settling what happens and that's where we differ and to be to be honest from my point of view he doesn't make a strong case that there is no room left for you to be

doing anything it's completely true that there all are these prior influences on your behavior that constrain you but yeah so we have lots of prior influences those influences are what make us who we are. And continuing to be like you and think like you and act like you is in a sense what it means to be doing you. And so it's a strange kind of perspective to just think that there's nothing left for the organism to do. There's nothing that that you thinking about things actually accomplishes. It's all sort of predetermined based on the way the neural circuits are configured. No, I guess the big question is that other than this being an academic argument, because I don't think you're going to convince people like Robert Sapolsky that we do have free will,

and he's not going to convince you or me that we don't have free will. So we can argue about this, but other than arguing about it, and that's kind of interesting. But so what? What's the so what here? Well, I mean, it has all kinds of potential implications for most obviously our legal system because the reason this is such a perennial subject for philosophers, for example, is because they think that our system of moral responsibility hangs on it. If it can't be said that you really made a decision, then how could you be held responsible for it? So that's the payoff. That's where

this cashes out. And it's not just in the legal system. It's in our entire social system, how we consider the ways that people should behave and how we as a society in a sense enforce those pro-social types of behavior by praising or blaming or rewarding or punishing or reinforcing you know behaviors that we that we think are good and generally that means pro-social so so there is a payoff my feeling is that you know robert for example makes the argument that we should get rid of our entire legal system, which I think goes a bit far. And his argument is really based on this idea that we don't all have an equal shake in life. And some of us really do have bad circumstances. And some of us really do have genetic predispositions towards certain

kinds of behavior and so on. And my feeling is actually that the legal system recognizes that. Now, this may be more or less true in different jurisdictions. But there's a fair sophisticated body of jurisprudence that's looking at questions of competence, questions of responsibility and mitigating circumstances and so on. Those come up all the time. My feeling is that the legal system does a reasonable job of dealing with them. Of course, there's lots of questions about sociology and politics that come into questions of fairness and equal equal responsibilities and rights and equal treatment and so on. But I don't feel, and those are all well-made questions,

but I don't feel like any of them hinges on this need to absolutely get rid of any sense of free will whatsoever. You can take those things into account as influences, as you said earlier, without having to say there's no involvement of the person in their own choices. It just seems to go against common sense and imagine a world where if we accept that there's no free will, then nobody should be rewarded for anything they do, nor should anybody be punished for anything they do because, well, that's, you know, that's just the way it is. I mean, that wouldn't, that's impossible. Well, I'm with you. I feel the same way.

Like I said, the arguments about societal fairness and equity. and the consequences of inequity, for example, on eventual behaviors that may be punishable. We can talk about those, and we have been, like society talks about those all the time, without having to get into the metaphysics of free will. So to me, those arguments just don't convince, and I don't find them necessary for the wider kind of concerns.

about what's called moral luck, the idea that some people just are more lucky than others. I think that's just obviously true, but doesn't mean nobody does anything. And to be honest, this is a wider question than just for humans, because of course, other animals do things too. That's their whole thing, is being able to do things in the world. And that was really part of what I was more interested in was how it can be that any organism can be said to do something. How does any organism come to control itself

and in such a way that it can act on the world as a causal agent? Because that is a central aspect of biology that doesn't often get foregrounded. In a way, it's taken for granted. But it's a very interesting question to ask, well, how did that evolve and come to be where in the world now you have entities that are unlike anything that was ever

there in the non-living world. So that was a broader concern. And again, if you take the deterministic viewpoint, you're not just eliminating free will in humans. You're getting rid of the very basic idea that any organism, any living thing can act in the world. But it would also seem that just on a more practical day-to-day level, it is so disempowering if you buy into the fact that you make no choice that you why get up in the morning and then of course those people would say because you're wired to get up in the morning or you that's what you do but but it's so disempowering because there are so many people who who seem pre-programmed to perhaps drink or gain weight or whatever but many people fight that and succeed many don't but but so if they were pre-programmed for that

and they overcame it, isn't that an argument against free will, or for free will? I would think so. And yet, you know, you can always do this sort of infinite regress and just say, oh, that's because they were inclined to be the type of person who would fight against the other predilections that they had and so on. You know, it gets a bit tiresome after a while if you just don't take any evidence of being able to control your behavior. on a kind of a meta level.

And this gets back to this argument that you can't do what you want, but you can't want what you want, which I think is just a mistake. I think that's just wrong. For me, choosing to want something is basically choosing a goal, because choosing a goal means that goal then dictates what you want to do. So if I choose to play a round of golf, then I'm going to want to put the little white ball in the little cup. And, yeah, I mean, that's a trivial example, but you can think about much broader examples, like if I choose to go to college to get a degree, then I'm choosing to want to get up in the morning and go to my classes, or at least I'm going to do that, whether I feel like it or not, right?

And so one of the errors that people make when they're talking about free will is it's usually framed in terms of these binary instantaneous decisions. So right now, do I want tea or coffee? And where did that idea come from that I wanted tea or coffee? And if you talk about examples like that, they're just kind of trivial, right? And maybe the idea pops into your head you want tea or coffee. Who cares, right? You know, it's not a big deal. If you like coffee more than tea, you'll just have coffee.

But it sort of trivializes the way we actually control our behavior because we're not just making these binary, instantaneous, reactive decisions, just. waiting for something to happen and then responding to stimulus one after another, we're guiding our behavior through time, right? So we're managing all kinds of goals and sub-goals and conflicting pressures and so on to decide what to do in the moment, but in the context of these whole suites of ongoing behaviors that we have and habits and policies and commitments that we've made and so on. So there's a much richer kind of view. of our control of our behavior where we're not just trying to make something happen in the next second or the next minute,

but we may be trying to shape the future four years in advance if we're doing a college degree or 20 years in advance if we're raising children or, you know, decades in advance if we're thinking about solving climate change or something like that. And that's a, it's a perspective that's not often presented in this, you know, very narrow, reductive, isolated kind of approach to decision-making in neuroscience, for example, because you can't study those things in the lab very well. So people don't generally sit around talking about this. Well, you probably do, but people in your circles do. But most people don't sit around at a cocktail party and say, so what do you think of this free will thing?

And I wonder, like, who even other than academics, and philosophers, who cares, who cares about this? I mean, what percentage of the population actually believes we don't have free will? I don't know. And it's funny because I hear, you know, a lot of, even just among neuroscientists, for example, you hear occasional people saying it, like Robert Sapolsky, for example. I don't know how widespread that view is, but I can tell you it's not, he's not alone. That's for sure.

I think among the more general public, many people would be just very surprised at the kind of argument that he makes and how strongly he makes it. So I don't know how strong the view is that we have no free will whatsoever. But I do think people talk about why they make decisions and, you know, in recurrent kind of scenarios or why they constantly do this thing. Like we've all had the occasion to say, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. or to think, why did I say that? That was terrible. And occasionally to be surprised by our own behavior and to regret something that we did and wish we hadn't done it.

So in those kinds of scenarios, I think there's at least a glimpse of the idea that we as our conscious selves are not always, let's say we don't always have our hands tightly on the wheel. It doesn't mean we can't grab the wheel. But when we have those moments of why did I do that? Why did I say that? Those tend not to be things that you sat down and thought about. They tend to be very quick reactions to something in the moment rather than let me sit down and come up with this really stupid, stupid thing to do.

Yeah, I think that's right. And in a sense, pointing to those kinds of scenarios, so some people would point to something like that and say, look, see, in this instance, you know, you, meaning your subconscious just made you do something and, you know, only and your conscious brain only learned about it afterwards. And, you know, there are some experiments from psychology and neurology where people really are behaving in those kinds of ways. They tend to be in abnormal situations in the sense of, you know, someone had a head injury or they're being, you know, prompted by some nefarious psychologists with some subliminal suggestions and so on, there tends to be amongst some people an extrapolation from those things to say,

look, because you didn't make a conscious decision in those scenarios, you never make one or you're just not capable of making one or no one is capable of making one. And that for me is just an error of reasoning. That thing just doesn't logically follow from showing that just because sometimes we make rash decisions without thinking about it doesn't. mean we can't think about things. As you just said, and I think you're absolutely right, that, you know, when we deliberate about things, of course, sometimes we still do foolish things, but at least, you know, we have the capacity to try and think about them. And, you know,

what humans have that's different from other animals is that we can think about our own thoughts and we can reason about our own reasons. So we have this level of metacognition that allows us to inspect our reasons for doing something. It just seems on a very basic level. And, you know, I know you can come up with lots of examples, but let's use this example. If there's a law, a speed limit on a road, and it's 70 miles an hour, and they change the speed limit to 60 miles an hour, a lot of people who would normally drive 70 will now drive 60, not because they were pre-programmed to drive 60 miles an hour, because they made a choice,

they made a decision based on the new law, they did it for a reason, they're now driving the new speed limit. It has nothing to do with their programming or their genetics. They're doing it for a reason, which is to follow the law. People seem to be doing things for reasons. for me is a defense of free will because that's what I take free will to be, the ability to do things for reasons. So yeah, like I said, it's a perspective thing. It's maddening because, as you say, you know, you can always say, well, it's because of this, it's because of this. And there's

no real way to refute that. But if people really believe that they have no control over their decisions. I mean, it would just be chaos. Yeah, that's the concern. I mean, personally, it's funny because I think, again, to give Robert his due here, I think he's driven by this urge for fairness and equity and fair treatment of everybody. And I think he's in a sense appalled by some of the particularities of the U.S. justice system where he sees unfairness. And that's fine. And I'm sympathetic to that. My own feeling is that to deny free will really strips us of our human dignity. And, you know, the idea that we have some personal responsibility is part of that picture of human dignity.

That we are actors. We have some autonomy in the world. We really can cause things. And, you know, for most people, that feeling of agency, the feeling of being in control, and the urge to maximize your own autonomy within various situations and throughout your life is really, really strong. It's very stressful to be stripped of your autonomy and feel like you're not allowed to make any decisions yourself. So to me, it's a very central part of our psychology. And I don't think it's just that the illusion of having a sense of agency is important.

I think really having agency is important. I am going to exert what I believe to be my free will and say we're about done here. Or maybe I was pre-programmed for all eternity to say that at this particular time. I've been speaking with Kevin Mitchell. He is an associate professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College in Dublin. And he's the author of a book called Free Agents, How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. There's a link to that book in the show notes and a reminder, a link to the interview I did with Robert

Sapolsky who argues that we do not have free will which now that you've heard this, I think you would find that very interesting. Thanks for being here, Kevin. I appreciate the time. Super. Okay, that's great. It was nice talking with you.

Have you ever used the phrase, that's a whole other story? Well, it's a pretty common phrase, but is nother really a word? Some people consider the word nother as bad grammar, while others say it's a natural evolution of our language. You probably won't find the word nother in a standard dictionary, but it is in the urban dictionary.

It's defined as an accidental word. Oh, the regency era. You might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place or the time when Jane Austen wrote her books, But the Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. And on the Vulgar History podcast, we're going to be looking at the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal of the Regency era. Vulgar history is a women's history podcast, and our Regency era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time. That includes Jane Austen herself, who is maybe more radical than you might have thought.

We'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister, scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresses, rebellious princesses, and other lesser-known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency era. Listen to vulgar history wherever you get podcasts. The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently. I am Robert Ince and I'm sat next to Brian Cox who has so much to tell you about what's on the series? Primarily eels. And what else? It was fascinating,

though, the eels. But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit. We're brain computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, signs of the North Pole, and eels. Did I mention the eels? Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagas O.C? Listen on BBC.com

or wherever you get your podcasts. Word that comes out when your tongue is unsure if it wants to say other or another. But Miriam Webster, has a whole another definition. It says it is the alteration from misdivision

of another and other. And that is something you should know. So the next time you're on your phone or you're sitting at your computer typing something, do me a favor and just type a review, a quick review of this podcast and post it on

Apple Podcast or whatever platform you listen to this show on. It'll only take you a second. And it means a lot to us. It really does help. I'm Mike. Her brothers, thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.