The Importance of Words in Neuroscience

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Our brains, it's crazy. Our brains don't react. We predict. And this happens completely outside of our awareness. It is a form in some ways of extra sensory perception. Even with a child as young as three months old, you can say to a child, look, sweetie, this is a wag and then you put the wag down and it beeps. This is a really remarkable thing. So eat slowly. Young men and women out there. Yes, eat slowly. Now, but this is quite fast.

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.