How to Wrestle With This Wicked Problem

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Each new layer that's put down is not identical to the one that came before it. We spend so much of our lives trying to make our future selves happy, Shankar says. When we lock people up and throw away the key, "we are going to be different in 30 years from now"

"You are constantly becoming a new person," says journalist Shankar Vedantam. In a talk full of beautiful storytelling, he explains the profound impact of something he calls the "illusion of continuity" -- the belief that our future selves will share the same views, perspectives and hopes as our current selves -- and shows how we can more proactively craft the people we are to become.