The Importance of Life and Death

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We don't imagine fundamentally that we're going to have a different outlook. This illusion has profound consequences, not just for whether we become soccer players or podcast hosts but for matters involving life and death. Let me introduce you to John and Stephanie Rinker. We did a story about them for Hidden Brains some years ago. They got married at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts; he was 22, she was 19.

"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.