Your Brain Is a Battleground for Emotion Versus Reason

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The idea of a triune brain is one of the most successful and widespread errors in all of science, says Erle. The myth is the foundation of the legal system in the U.S., he adds. And it's false because your brain doesn't work like that: It's not structured that way. But yet, Carl Sagan put it into a book that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977; poof, we have this story which appears still in many textbooks in medicine.

If you managed to stay awake during Bio 101, then you probably think you have a basic understanding of how your brain works. Not so, says neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett. In this cerebral yet highly entertaining conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Daniel Pink, Lisa says our brains are made for budgeting, not thinking. She debunks the myth of the lizard brain. And she makes the far-out claim that everything you see and hear, including this podcast, is a hallucination.