662: Where There Is a Will

Ira Glass

My friend Etgar, his mom does not take no for an answer. Etgar's Israeli. Etgar Keret, we run his short stories here on the radio show now and then.

Anyway, years ago, Etgar's older brother was in the army serving in Lebanon. Israel had just invaded Lebanon. It was war.

And it sounds incredible to us, but the policy of the Israeli army is that if it's at all possible, you go home on leave every two weeks. And Lebanon's close, just next door to Israel. Etgar says his brother was coming home every month. And then that stopped. He wasn't getting any leave.

Ira Glass

Etgar explained her strategy was simple. She'd call the guy's office, talk to whoever answered.

Ira Glass

She did the same thing with that person and then that person's superior.

Ira Glass

The next afternoon, Etgar's brother arrived home. So they pulled him out of his ranks, told him to get on a helicopter. He had no idea what was going on, nor did anybody else.

He assumed some family member died or something, Etgar says. And he got his break.

Ira Glass

I should say, we cannot confirm the details of this story, including the dialogue between Etgar's mom and Rafael Eitan. This happened over 30 years ago. Eitan's dead. When we got Etgar's mom, she said, sure, whatever Etgar says.

But there are many stories of Etgar's mom doing things like this. There was a time she threatened a mugger so effectively that he abandoned the idea of mugging her in the middle of the mugging. There was a showdown with the president of Poland that ended when the president of Poland finally gave her the passport she demanded, as somebody who had been born in Poland.

Etgar is the same way in certain situations. He doesn't threaten. That's not who he is. He just reasons people to death.

Case in point, a couple of years ago, he and his wife Shira and their then 8-year-old son, Lev, were traveling, and they left a backpack on an airplane. In the backpack was Etgar's iPad, which had all of his son's games on it.

Lev had spent months on his games working his way up the levels of the games. Now, that was gone. Lev was really messed up about it. Any parent knows what I'm talking about.

And they called the airline. The airline says, no problem. When you get to the airport for the return flight, go to lost and found. It'll be there.

So comes the day. They're on their way home. They get to the airport. This is in Rome. They can't find the lost and found. Time is getting short. They've got a plane to catch.

Finally, a guy at the car rental-- super nice guy-- offers to take them to it.

Ira Glass

She says to Etgar, she needs a letter from the airline saying he was on the same flight as the backpack. Etgar doesn't have this letter.

Ira Glass

As somebody who knows Etgar, I'll just say, wrong move. Something deep and powerful kicks in inside him.

Ira Glass

These things happen so often that Etgar's wife, Shira, worries that someday, somebody is just going to go nuts on Etgar or something, hurt him.

Ira Glass

Well, today, on our program, we have a story about somebody else who can't help himself. He sees something he needs to fix, he needs to take care of, he needs to make it right. And then through sheer force of will, he makes things happen boldly, heroically. Though is it heroic if you can't stop yourself?

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act 1, Loudspeaker.

So we start today with a guy, who-- I don't want to overstate this, and it sounds really big when you say this out loud, but I really think it might be the truth-- a guy who, with sheer force of will, utterly changed our politics and created the political world we live in today, alongside a second man who helped him. Zoe Chace tells the tale.

Zoe Chace

It's probably helpful in telling this story to remember for a second what politics was like before today-- how different, informal, and quaint things used to sound.

Zoe Chace

This is President Reagan walking onto the South Lawn. It's 1983, April, but apparently, a cold day. One of the lawmakers is looking very Soviet in his big coat and fur collar.

Zoe Chace

Reagan's in this '70s, all brown suit, with a brown tie.

Zoe Chace

Social security legislation, a major bipartisan compromise involving raising taxes and cutting spending to things that only go together when it's a bipartisan compromise.

Zoe Chace

A special treat, the Democratic leader. The friendship between Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill is one of the most famous friendships in American politics. These days, it's regularly trotted out, like a fable, to demonstrate what the good old days were like back when things worked.

If you knew anything about Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, you know he was a bipartisan schmoozer, a big Muppety guy, who took up a lot of space in the room. He'd invite members from both parties to poker nights in DC. He was in Congress for decades and by the time he was Speaker, he was a living legend type.

Zoe Chace

This is Reagan talking to William F. Buckley.

Zoe Chace

To be fair, O'Neill had been known to call Reagan a real Ebenezer Scrooge. Truth is, their relationship was complicated. They disagreed profoundly about a lot of stuff.

But that's the point. It's why people tell each other this story. The two were able to come together and talk, compromise, and pass legislation. Anyway, here we are today.

Zoe Chace

People are mean about each other now in public, all the time, in particular, the president. And of course, people fight back. This is Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

Zoe Chace

Lamb the Sham never caught on. But you know what I'm talking about. It's different now.

Here, I want to lay out for you one theory of the case as to how we got from there to here. We've always had two parties. But we didn't always have two teams like we do now.

Red versus blue, us versus them. Each side routinely demonizes the other side as un-American. You sign up for one issue-- the wall, the Mueller investigation, Colin Kaepernick, climate change-- you basically sign up for all of them.

It wasn't always so zero sum like it's become. You could explain what happened in different ways. But I'm going to argue it was the work of these two guys that got us to this point, two guys, one quarterbacking the other.

And so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the first of the two men who created the modern world. You know him from Fox News. You know him from Republican primaries gone by, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

Zoe Chace

Gingrich was a weird, nerdy kid growing up. People close to him say he always pictured himself as a historical figure, someone who would bend the course of American history, someone who anticipated stories like the one I'm telling you now. From his teenage years, he thought this way.

He ran for Congress twice in West Georgia, lost, and then finally won a seat in the House in 1978 with a 1778 attitude, like there was a revolution on, and the country's very existence was at stake. We're fighting a war, Gingrich said back then, a war for power. Raise hell. Raise hell all the time.

His goal was to retake the House of Representatives. At the time, an impossible dream. Republicans had been in the minority for 24 years. People called it the permanent Democratic Congress.

Once Newt finally got there, he discovered, as he'd suspected, was a place full of losers with Stockholm syndrome. It was chummy, mostly guys in suits and ties, smoking cigars, playing poker together and generally, getting along, hanging out, talking to each other. Also, depending on your perspective, it was a corrupt cesspool of bribes and giveaways. That's definitely how Gingrich saw it.

Republicans didn't have much power, but they'd go along to get along and occasionally do some deals. And most of them had stopped imagining it could be any other way. I learned most of this story from the great political reporter Steve Kornacki. He'd just published a book about this time called The Red and The Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism. He's also that excited guy at the big board on MSNBC during elections.

Zoe Chace

C-Span may not sound exciting to you, but A, it's still awesome. And B, it's a major change. Now anyone can see for themselves what's going on in Congress if they want to. And people in Congress can speak to anyone on the outside.

Newt gets it right away. The rest of the House does not.

Zoe Chace

OK, not Twitter exactly. He's professorial, pedantic, not a lot of flair.

Zoe Chace

Often Gingrich or one of his few allies was explaining how the Democrats were fringy, communist radicals. The whole party, everyone in the party was, more or less, a socialist. It was sort of his version of all Democrats want open borders, but less punchy.

Zoe Chace

Newt believed there was a Republican majority out there. Because just a decade earlier, Richard Nixon had trounced the Democratic candidate for president. He won 49 out of the 50 states. Clearly, there was an appetite for Republican rule.

But Republicans were still a minority in the House. People somehow weren't syncing up their Republican votes into one Republican ticket. What he needed to do was paint all the Democrats more clearly as the enemy to the voters. And he'd do that by associating all of them with a candidate who'd lost to Nixon-- George McGovern.

George McGovern was sort of the Bernie Sanders of his day. So lefty, he even freaked out a lot of Democrats in '72-- the counterculture, anti-war candidate.

Zoe Chace

Based on what they saw on C-Span, where over and over again, Newt brought up McGovern.

Zoe Chace

Attacking congressmen by congressmen by name and footnotes.

Zoe Chace

This speechifying made the Speaker of the House furious. You remember the Speaker, the affable Muppet, Tip O'Neill. Newt Gingrich and a couple of the other guys, Gingrich acolytes, are talking smack about specific congressmen. They're questioning their patriotism on the public record, and they aren't even there to respond.

That was not done. It was against the gentlemanly code of the House. As Speaker, Tip O'Neill controls the cameras. And he orders them to pan out and show the empty room that Gingrich and his buddies are addressing.

Bob Walker, Republican from Pennsylvania, happens to be speaking right then. And he takes great umbrage when this happens.

Zoe Chace

Tip O'Neill thinks this will make the guys look petty talking to no one. Watching it, it's like a surreal Beckett play. A tiny man at the bottom of the screen gestures wildly from a podium as though he's speaking to a big crowd, but he's surrounded by empty chairs.

Zoe Chace

Lots of C-Span watchers today understand the congressmen are putting on a performance. There isn't always someone in the audience. But it was new back then.

This all sets up a wild showdown between Newt and the Speaker Tip O'Neill. A few days later, Gingrich gets time on the floor.

Zoe Chace

The Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill asking Gingrich to yield, so he can say something. And Newt does, knowing the Speaker is going to yell at him. This time, the chamber is packed with congressmen and reporters both. Here's Tip O'Neill.

Zoe Chace

As insults go, in the US House, circa 1984, this is big, so big, Trent Lott, Republican from Mississippi, standing near the Speaker says, I move we take the Speaker's words down.

Zoe Chace

This means that would Tip O'Neill just said to Gingrich is so offensive, so toxic that he wants the wrongness of it officially acknowledged, perhaps even struck from the historical record as though it had never been said. For five full minutes, everyone shuffles around, clutching their pearls about Newt, about the Speaker's behavior, how do we preserve the dignity of the House.

The clerk reads out the offending speech once again so that the Chair can decide what to do about it.

Zoe Chace

This is like saying, that was out of line. Don't do that again. That was very bad. But it doesn't actually erase the words from the historical record. Still, it was an epic showdown. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill being scolded in front of America.

Maybe it's hard to understand what a coup this is for a younger congressman. But think of him as a producer, a producer of his newly-formed experimental cable news show on C-Span, how expertly produced this moment was.

Everyone's in the room. The Speaker of the House basically promotes Gingrich's late night program. Then the Speaker gets called out in front of the whole country, and he looks arrogant and mean. And Newt Gingrich is at the center of the room, like a conductor, pointing from one guy to the next guy, doling out time, as the Speaker gets red in the face and yells over the room.

Zoe Chace

And the story is covered on the nightly news. This is a turning point for Newt Gingrich. He's now the Pied Piper, and other Republicans start rallying to his causes.

Not long after this episode, Tip O'Neill retires. And he's replaced by Speaker Jim Wright. Newt sees an opening to take Wright down. He thinks it'll rally the Republicans in the House. It's a battle they can win.

Wright is both cocky and dismissive of the minority party, with none of the hail buddy Tip O'Neill warmth. It'll be a branding exercise for the new aggressive Republican Party Newt was selling.

Here's what happens. He reads a story in the Washington Post about the new Speaker getting $0.50 on the dollar for every one of his books he's selling. It's more of a pamphlet than a book, actually, but it's a way to give the congressman backdoor donations. The people buying it were like the local Teamsters in his district and supporters at rallies.

Newt talks to the papers about this, compares Wrights to Mussolini, makes speeches. Think of it as though he's standing on his tiptoes, shouting over the heads of Congress to the American people-- drain the swamp. That's his intention.

Zoe Chace

Newt's striking at the top of the food chain. It's brazen. I want to say here, as tactical as Gingrich's attack on Wright was, from one perspective, this was an attack on corrupt, lazy Democrats that was long overdue. It felt idealistic for everyone sick of being pushed around in the minority.

Gingrich promised a new system that was less corrupt, more transparent, more accountable to the voters, not just like we're putting on a play that we're two parties. But at 6:00 PM, we dropped the mask and make it work. Democrats freaked out when this happened, but Republicans were getting into it.

Zoe Chace

Newt gets his ethics investigation into the Speaker's behavior. Wright defends himself petulantly on the House floor.

Zoe Chace

It's kind of, yes, I had a private email server, but it wasn't that big a deal. You know by now how that goes over. After an investigation, the most powerful man in the House, who had served for 34 years, is forced to resign. Wright gives a speech on the House floor that reminded me of Jeff Flake retiring from the Senate last year.

Zoe Chace

Jim Wright painted his resignation as a sacrifice on the altar of civility. He seemed to think his resignation would be so dramatic, it would put an end to the wars Gingrich had started in the House. Obviously, the opposite is true.

Republicans in Congress are galvanized by Wright's fall and Newt's tactics to get him out. The wars that Gingrich dreamed of are starting to materialize. Newt becomes the second most powerful Republican in the House, and he starts making himself into a franchise in the mid '80s.

He starts running this organization called GOPAC. It's basically a candidate training organization and fundraising tool. That's where he develops these audiotapes, little by-mail cassette tapes that teach potential candidates how to do Newt's divisive brand of politics. John Boehner has talked about driving around, listening to tapes like this in the car.

Zoe Chace

You're not us. You're on one team or the other. So that's a lot. Gingrich is almost at the height of his power. He has an army of Republicans falling in line using the same language that they're going into battle-- he has media attention.

But it's the same old, entrenched Democratic Congress. The Republicans keep winning these big presidential victories, but the House is stuck with that permanent Republican minority. That's when the second guy comes into this story, the guy that made Newt Gingrich's dreams finally come true.

And no, I don't mean Democratic President Bill Clinton, though, you could certainly argue that that is why Newt gets his wish. But something happens before that-- someone.

Zoe Chace

Here's Newt Gingrich introducing him at a training event for Republican candidates in 1995.

Zoe Chace

Rush Limbaugh was the perfect tool for Newt's mission. He and Newt had basically the same views. But Rush was outrageous and exciting. He made his listeners feel like they were part of a righteous underground movement, the only people who were still sane in a world gone crazy and stupid.

Zoe Chace

Rush's communications' ambitions were just as high as Newt's political ones. He never wanted to be in politics. He just wanted to make the greatest radio show ever.

Zoe Chace

He set the standard for political talk radio. And of course-- wait, I have it right here-- widely imitated. Rush was funny.

Zoe Chace

He could also be cruel. He said things like if you don't want to get AIDS, don't have gay sex. He was heavily anti-political correctness. He ended up acting almost as Newt's de facto interpreter. He zhuzhed up his message.

Rush doesn't sound like a nerdy YouTube professor. Gingrich talked about saving America from liberal politicians. But Limbaugh sharpened the Us vs. Them. Democrats were about this. Republicans were about that. This is from Rush's TV show.

Zoe Chace

Bill Clinton's nominee for attorney general, Zoe Baird, hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny for her kids, didn't pay social security taxes. At the time, I was 11. I remember it well. She was the only other Zoe I'd ever heard of. So I was thrilled.

Zoe paid the money back after she was nominated. And neither Senate Democrats or Republicans saw it as a big deal at first.

Zoe Chace

When Newt needed to communicate something to voters, he now had a direct line to millions of them listening to Rush every afternoon.

Zoe Chace

That's from the documentary Rush Limbaugh's America. It describes how Newt would just fax talking points out to talk show hosts around the country. It was like he was calling in airstrikes.

Zoe Chace

Newt wasn't just stirring the pot with divisive politics. He did have a policy vision. He got people to unite under it. Going into the 1994 midterm elections, hundreds of Republican candidates signed on to this thing-- the Contract with America. For a moment, they were all literally on the same page with Newt Gingrich.

The contract promised to fix everything they thought had gone wrong after 40 years of one-party control of the House. There were anti-corruption measures targeted at the Congress itself, plus a slate of 10 proposals to balance the budget, cut welfare, do tougher sentencing, lower taxes, basically, a limited government, law-and-order agenda. They ran the contract in full in an ad in TV Guide, because everyone read TV Guide, and they'd open it up several times a week.

And with that, Newt Gingrich, of course, got his majority, like he'd always dreamed, and became Speaker of the House in 1995. He moved into the office held by Jim Wright and Tip O'Neil before him. Here's Democrat Dick Gephardt handing over the gavel.

Zoe Chace

Newt Gingrich pledges to work across the aisle, as they always do, though, for the first time, Republicans don't have to. It's an epic hugely significant victory. Though it was Newt's dream, many people called it the Limbaugh Congress.

Zoe Chace

It wasn't just the majority they'd gotten. People seem to be signing on to their vision of the country. That it was split into two clear camps. The Democrats were amoral, welfare state-loving, politically correct feminists. Republicans were responsible, balanced, budget-promoting, normal, regular Americans.

Zoe Chace

From the moment Gingrich becomes Speaker, things get pretty red versus blue. One Republican I talked to this week quoted to me from memory, indignant, something ABC News anchor Peter Jennings said on the air when Republicans finally took the House and installed Gingrich as Speaker.

Jennings said the voters had a temper tantrum. The nation can't be run by an angry 2-year-old. This Republican's point was it wasn't just Rush Limbaugh who is stoking the fires of partisan warfare. It was the mainstream media, what he called the liberal media.

It was a new day in Congress. The Speaker and the president-- Gingrich and Clinton-- they did not hang out. The politics that follow are personal and vicious, as I'm sure you know. It's a storm of whitewater, Hillarycare, government shutdown, Vince Foster, impeachment proceedings. Seems like the two sides couldn't stand each other.

When Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal office building in Oklahoma City, Clinton gives a speech blaming, in part, talk radio for spreading hate. It was gridlock politics. Depending how you saw it, it was obstructionism for its own sake or obstructionism in defense of bigger ideas that were finally part of the conversation.

People signed up for red or signed up for blue. Politics is team sports, no compromises. In other words, we've arrived at today.

The whole reason I wanted to remind myself of Newt and that time were these past midterm elections. They felt like the extreme sports version of Newt's game plan. Just like he worked really hard to make every Democrat into George McGovern, the campaign that the Republicans ran tried to make every Democrat into a caravan-loving, Kavanaugh-hating Nancy Pelosi.

Newt himself was on Fox a bunch. And his lieutenant--

Zoe Chace

Rush Limbaugh was the opener for Trump's last rally before the midterm vote.

Zoe Chace

There is this one moment, where I think Newt realized maybe he'd gone too far in pushing people apart. Stephen Gillon reported the story years later in his book, The Pact.

It was October 1997. Newt was Speaker. Clinton was president. They wanted to cement their legacies as great men of history.

They decided to tackle two of the most daunting issues out there-- Medicare and Social Security. Fix them once and for all so they'd be safe for generations to come. The federal budget, for once, was about to run a surplus. Now was the time.

Because they'd fought so publicly, they met in secret. To avoid reporters, Gingrich entered the White House through a side door. If the partisans in either of their parties heard they were working together, the deal would fall apart. The zealots on both teams would punish you for working with the other side.

The deal never happened. Four months after they agreed to work together, the Monica Lewinsky story broke. A few months after that, Gingrich was pushed out of the House. He had to deal with ethics charges, like the Speaker he'd gone after 10 years earlier. And he was really unpopular by then.

The political environment he'd willed into creation had spit him out. I can't work anymore with these cannibals, he said as he left. But look at him now. He can't stay away.

Ira Glass

Zoe Chace is one of the producers of our program. Thanks to Steve Kornacki, whose book gave us the idea for this story. His book is called The Red and The Blue The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism.

Coming up-- now, I would say that one of our co-workers got the idea to do the story you're going to hear in a minute. He would say he had no choice about that or, for that matter, about anything ever in his life. And he'd say, you don't have a choice either. What the hell he means by that, and he is not kidding. In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on the program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different stories on that theme. Today's show-- where there's a will, stories of people who cannot stop themselves from trying to make things happen the way they think they should happen in this world. We've arrived at Act Two of our program.

Ira Glass

Act Two, Life is a one-sided coin.

So the entire premise of our show today is where there's a will, which presupposes that we all have a will. That we all have the ability to decide something and take action in the world. But it turns out that there are people who take issue with that premise. And one of them is one of our co-workers here at the radio show, David Kestenbaum. He now presents This Minority Report.

David Kestenbaum

Let me say upfront, I realize the ridiculous, late-night, college-dorm-room nature of what I'm about to say, but here it is. I do not see how free will can exist. By free will, I mean, when you're staring at the menu, and you pick the salad over the burger or any other choice you make-- big or small-- who you marry, whether you keep listening to me for another minute.

Free will is the idea that you really get to pick. I'm saying you don't. I don't see how free will can exist.

I'm somewhat embarrassed to be saying all this. For awhile, I couldn't even talk with my wife about it. It's been on my mind because I was wondering if I should talk about it on the show today.

And we'd be making the kids' lunches for the next day. There'd be a gap in the conversation. I'd open my mouth, but I just couldn't do it.

I don't know why I'm thinking about this now. I think the last time I did was in high school. But I just moved on.

It seems inescapable though. Years ago, I went to grad school in physics. And I think, if you haven't had the experience of actually doing something like that, it's easy to be like, oh, science. There's lots of stuff they don't know.

But the truth is, we know a lot about how the world was put together. And please excuse the lecturing quality of this. But briefly, there are only four basic forces in the world-- gravity, electromagnetism, and two others, the strong force and the weak force, the first holds atomic nuclei together. The second, crudely speaking, powers the sun.

Our understanding of these forces has been tested and explored again and again. In one case that sticks with me measured and confirmed to an astounding 12 decimal places. These four forces explain how atoms stick together, how every bit of matter moves, and yes, even the bits of matter that make up us and our brains. We are just collections of atoms.

I don't see how those atoms can truly have any will. When you think you're deciding, I'm going to wear this shirt today, you can't really have decided otherwise. We are subject to the forces of nature, not one of them.

It turns out there is this one friend of our family-- hey, Stu-- who also does not see how free will can exist. I was talking to him on the phone, asking if he knew any serious-minded, credentialed people who I could talk to and put on the radio. As it happened, he was staring at his bookshelf. He had a whole collection.

There are books by a bunch of dead philosophers, thinkers of various sorts, and then one book by someone who seemed perfect-- Robert Sapolsky. Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford, Genius Grant recipient. He's a neuroscientist, who also spent 33 summers staring at baboons.

Just last year, he published this big book that was on my friend's shelf, called Behave. So I read it. And there is something curious about it. He seemed to be making the argument that there is no free will. But he never quite came out and said it.

The words free will don't even appear until page 580. The first 15 chapters are all about research into what drives human behavior, different parts of the brain, hormones, genetics, how we respond to sensory cues. Was he just avoiding coming out and saying it, like I've been?

David Kestenbaum

Sapolsky said, this was, in fact, the entire reason he had written the book. He was trying to lead people slowly along a gentle path to this uncomfortable idea. I was reading it right.

I asked him why he doesn't believe we have free will. As a neuroscientist, he thinks about it this way. Take any action-- a movement of your eyebrow, something you say. Just trace that thing back. Behind anything like that are just some muscles that moved.

David Kestenbaum

Your emotions, consciousness-- same argument. At the bottom, just cells and chemicals acting like they would in the lab.

David Kestenbaum

I should say, there is some debate about whether no free will means that if you went back in time, and let your life unfold again, you would make all the same decisions exactly the same way. The reason there's some debate is that way down at the subatomic level, there does seem to be a little wellspring of randomness.

Quantum mechanics is all about probabilities. Like when a radioactive atom breaks apart, the exact moment it happens seems random. It's unclear how often this apparent subatomic randomness escapes into the larger world. But it could be that if you rewound the film of life and played it forward again, you might get a different movie. But it wouldn't be because of free will. It would just be subatomic randomness messing with the plot.

A friend of mine had this experience where he kind of got to test this out. His brain was artificially rolling back the clock, and he got to see its machine-like nature. He went ice skating, and he fell and hit his head, which gave him some temporary amnesia.

When he was on the stretcher, he asked what had happened. His wife said, you fell and hit your head. And he made this joke. That's not how you want to leave the ice. But then he kept asking what had happened and making the same joke, like, oh, I fell on the ice. I know a good joke to make here.

After, he said it was like opening up the hard drive of his mind and seeing inside. He's fine now, by the way.

David Kestenbaum

So while it feels like we could choose this or maybe that, the truth is, some set of events mechanically led to our final decision. We just aren't aware of it. Sapolsky brought of this famous experiment.

David Kestenbaum

Sapolsky says, when we think we are making a decision, it is basically just some more complicated version of that. You were looking at the menu. The room was slightly warm. Your shoes were wet from the rain. The light above the table was just so, and so you picked the salad.

The mom who yells at the army general couldn't have done it any other way. Newt Gingrich, when he got to Congress-- same thing. Speaking of which, did we all just go and vote? Choose our representatives?

If you believe what I'm saying, no one really could have decided to choose differently. And look, I'm not saying, don't vote. You should vote. Do good things. Be kind. Give to charity.

I'm just saying, it's weird. We are machines that don't know it, but don't want to deal with it.

For Sapolsky, this idea that we don't have free will is truly profound and should change the way we think about lots of things. For instance, all those decisions you've made because you're a good person, all those things you're proud of-- don't be so proud. Anyone else starting with your atoms in the same place would have done the same thing.

When people do bad things, he says you shouldn't hate them. Probably also, he says, we should try to rethink the entire justice system, which, of course, is a weird thing to say since there is no trying.

David Kestenbaum

It's amazing to me that scientists don't talk about this more. I think I went my entire graduate career testing the fundamental laws of nature without it ever coming up.

David Kestenbaum

This is Melissa Franklin, professor of physics at Harvard. And for years, she was my professor. I talked to her for the show when I was grappling with the possibility that we might be alone in the universe. So she seemed like the logical choice for this question.

David Kestenbaum

She was at lunch when this conversation happened. And immediately, another colleague jumped in to argue the other side.

I go back and forth on what to do with this information. Sometimes I feel like Robert Sapolsky does. That this is something deeply profound. We are machines that are smart enough to have figured that out, to realize we probably can't have free will.

And so we should think about what that means for how we organize our society, how we treat other people. But there is another part of me that feels like maybe it changes nothing at all, which is weird to know that we are all living with this illusion of free will, but somehow doesn't matter. I've come to think of my daily existence as kind of like being in a movie, where I'm just along for the ride.

I'm making choices all day long. But the machine that is me couldn't really have chosen anything else. It gives me a weird lightness when I think about it that way. And if I'm being honest, it also feels kind of cool knowing this thing that no one wants to face up to, watching us all run around as if not true.

When you pick a song to listen to, when you decide to try a second date, when you go left instead of right, when I say something stupid instead of just sitting and thinking for a moment, when I pick what picture to draw on my son's lunch bag, those aren't really choices. But I'm good at living with contradictions. It's in the machinery.

Ira Glass

Our show was produced today by David Kestenbaum. The people who put our show together include Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Jarrett Floyd, Damien Grave, Michele Harris, Chana-Joffe Walt, Seth Lind, Ana Martin, Miki Meek, Stowe Nelson, Katharine Mae Mondo, Robyn Semien and Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala and Diane Wu, our senior producer, Brian Reed, our managing editor, Susan Burton.

Special thanks today to Rob Long, Kelefa Sanneh, Stu Greenberg, Sean Carroll, Jim Naureckas, Charlie Schaupp, Stephen Talbot. And thanks to the Frontline documentary, The Long March of Newt Gingrich, our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can listen to our archive of over 600 episodes for absolutely free.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. And as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. I said, Torey, we've got 30 seconds left in the program. What should we do?